


Ten Sides

by TalesOfOnyxBats



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mind Manipulation, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 29,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27547747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfOnyxBats/pseuds/TalesOfOnyxBats
Summary: After her breakdown, Azula is sent to an institution that alters her moods using spirit energy. Aang is an instrumental pawn in this endeavor.
Relationships: Aang/Azula (Avatar)
Comments: 59
Kudos: 90





	1. A Face To Many Names

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to get myself back into writing long fics again by retconning/rebooting an old fic premise. This is a redo of Tamper.

They like to tamper with her spirit. She supposes that it doesn’t matter because it is broken anyways. They constantly shift it and mold it and faintly Azula knows that it is wrong. But they have tampered with her spirit too much already for her to be alarmed by it beyond the simple acknowledgment that it is unnatural and invasive, no matter how good the intent. And lately she doesn’t have a reason to believe that their intentions are good. She isn’t sure when they began to shift from therapy to control but she hasn’t the means to fend their antics off.

She has become a lab elephant-rat of sorts. Before her, spirit vines have never been used to treat a patient like herself. Combined with the Avatar's reluctant aid, she hasn’t even a chance to resist. So her moods shift constantly and not of her own accord. Not even of their own accord. They shift and bend to the will of Aang.

To the will of the Sun Pool facility personal. 

Azula is a different person day to day. They will elevate her mood and she will become chipper and bubbly, more like TyLee than herself. Sometimes they will touch her spirit in the wrong way and she will be numb and impassive, almost depressive. More closely resembling Mai in this instance. At some point she had taken to naming each personality that seemed to emerge from them playing with her emotions. Including the real Azula there are ten; Cheerful and bubbly Azula is Sachi. Somber Azula is Yuka. When they have her in a state of unexplainable rage, she becomes Shiori. The passionate and lustful, Aiakahana is the most uncomfortable to reflect upon. Being Aiakahana brings her a sense of shame and embarrassment. Humiliation has a name too, it is Rokora, who was easy to make flustered and awkward.

Other times they are able to bring out a more curiosity driven, childlike version of her. This person, she calls, Inori. They could elicit a more fearful and paranoid version of herself—Kowagaru, she names that one.

There are three emotions that they seem to enjoy amplifying the most; there is a generous and giving Azula, who she has named Shona and a loving and rather sweet version of her that she calls Ai-Emi. Least of all, Azula enjoys being Nari.

Nari is timid, shy, and soft-spoken. Often she is prone to being taken advantage of. Nari is everything Azula dreads letting herself be. She has no fight. She has no control nor dominance. They usually evoke Nari when they want to try a new treatment with her or to subdue her. They know she won’t say no, and if she does then they know that she will eventually submit. She is almost certain that they are trying to mold her into Nari for good. She would certainly be easier to manage that way.

These days, even on the days where they aren’t tampering so heavily with her spirit energy, Azula finds herself in a state of confusion. Somewhere down the lines she has lost herself completely, she is growing uncertain of which personality is her real one. She can no longer tell if she is truly feeling things of her own accord or if they are false emotions. And she loathes the uncertainty, the insecurity.

She lies tethered to a bed, it might as well be a cold metal operating table. The warm and plush sheets are falsely comforting. She supposes that it is another ploy to coax Nari to the foreground as much as possible. 

“Try to relax.” Instructs the head of operations, a doctor named Sangyul. She doesn’t think that she has a choice. If she can’t calm herself, Aang will instill serenity within her. She decides that she should just try to calm herself on her own. She lets her body go slack. “Good.” The remark is completely patronizing and is almost enough to bring tension back to her. 

“Avatar Aang.” 

With that cue, Aang steps forward. His eyes are wide and innocent. His demeanor is nothing but friendly and hopeful and yet the sight of it instills nausea within her. “Good morning, Azula.” He greets. 

She stares at her palms. 

He has been doing this long enough to know that he won’t be getting a response. Sangyul fixes a few spirit vines across her forehead and at her temples and beckons Aang forward. The smile that the Avatar offers is supposed to be reassuring. It only makes her feel sicker, some part of her wonders if he does know exactly what he is doing and that he reaps some sick joy from it. She closes her eyes as his fingers press against her forehead. The spirit vines radiate a faint purple as Aang taps into their power. 

She can feel him working his way in. She has long since given up on trying to wall him out. His fingers are phantasmal and they pull and tug on invisible threads of energy. In her mind, their color varies; brilliant red-orange, she thinks, is their natural state. An aura of power and control and confidence. When she is angry they flare a brighter red and when she feels passion, the hue is more scarlett. 

Aang’s energy, as it invades hers, is a white-blue, tinged with the purple of spirit vines. It creeps in and curls around the vulnerable threads of her aura and emotions. The white-blue tendrils fan out until they touch each and every thread. It is a tedious process, a slow one. Once the first thread is wholly wrapped in pink, he moves on to the next and then the next. 

Even after all of this time, he still hasn’t mastered the art. Every now and again, he forgets to unravel the thread--or simply can’t seem to do it--and so pink turns bright red and then deep red. 

The purple radiating upon and around the spirit vines is beginning to fade. Aang doesn’t have time to go back and correct his mistakes. Half of the threads of her mood are pink and the other half are left scarlet. 

Azula hasn’t yet come up with names for the hybrid emotions he has been leaving her with lately. Granted, this time there is more pink than scarlet. She is exhausted.

Exhausted to the point where she can barely lift a finger. 

“You alright?” Aang asks. 

She yearns to tell him that he can save his false care, but only manages a sleepy murumer. 

Like clockwork, they peel the vines from her head and lead her back to her room to sleep it off. When she wakes she won’t be her. 

**.oOo.**

Aang is sitting at the foot of her bed. With nothing else to do, he observes her sleeping form. These days, she looks so small and fragile. In that way, she doesn’t even look like her. When her eyes flutter open he wishes that he could be elsewhere, for both her sake and his own. 

“Avatar.” She greets, her voice is low and soft with sleepiness. She heaves herself upright and eyes the boy. Her expression is too kind for it to be her, the real her. His stomach lurches, Sangyul will be pleased with his work, but he only feels disgust.

“They said that it might be good for you if I ate dinner with you.” 

Azula swallows, “you...you want to have dinner with me?” 

Aang’s unease grows when she struggles to meet his stare. He offers her a soft, albeit, uncomfortable smile. He is all too familiar with this mood. “Yeah, I think that it would be good for you to have some company.” 

She gives a rather sheepish smile. “I think that, that would be nice.”

Aang rubs the back of his head. “Yeah.” He lays down a small box containing fried rice, noodles topped with an egg, and a small assortment of fruits. 

“Did you make all of this?”

He did, he had carefully put it together, a little something to lift her mood but also because the stuff that they try to feed her looks foul. He shakes his head anyways, he knows how she will take it if he says that he had cooked for her and it makes him feel terribly awkward and guilty. 

“Oh.” She looks downcast. Disappointed. 

It is better if she is. 

Her smile returns, “well, it is good to have a meal with you, Avatar.” Her fingers brush over his; he hadn’t painted her aura with enough deep red for her to dare anything more than that. But he is well aware that she wants to, that she wishes she had the courage for it. He can see it in her eyes, it is the look Katara had given to him some time ago, before he had lost his way. 

He wants to tell her that it is nice to have a meal with her too, but it will have the same effect as telling her that he prepared dinner for her. “Please just eat, Azula.” 

Her face falls again. She picks up her chopsticks and hovers a few noodles in front of her mouth before putting them down again. “You’re angry with me.”

“No! No! I just…” he just what? “I just...they don’t give you a very long dinner time and I need to make sure that you have time to finish it.” He finishes lamely. 

She has a few quiet bites before offering him one. Again he shakes his head, “it’s your dinner. I already ate.” 

When she finishes her meal he finds himself wishing that he were right about her having short meal times. There is no food left to keep her occupied for what remains of the hour and it is a good twenty minutes. She twirls her bangs around her pointer. Were she Azula,  _ really  _ Azula, he would use this extra time to ask her how she is feeling. There is no sense in it when he knows how she is feeling. How he has forced her to feel.

She loves him.

For now, anyhow. 

Not for the first time, he questions how this is supposed to help her heal and recover. And not for the first time, he concludes that helping her get better had never been a goal at all. 

He will tell them that he no longer feels up to treating her. 

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being here, Avatar. You’re the only person here who isn’t...cold. I think that you actually care for me.” She pauses, moving closer towards him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me or how to fix it. They’re supposed to help me but they don’t. You do though, you try, I think.” She wraps her arms around him and nuzzles her face into his chest. 

His stomach knots. He isn’t a bad guy, he is worse than that. And he has probably just proved that by letting her lean into him and hugging her back. He feels like he is taking advantage of her. He shouldn’t be hugging her back. Even if comforting her is his only goal. She isn’t crying this time but he has been around her long enough to sense the hurt. Even if it is buried under layers of false emotions. 

Azula is still there. The real Azula. He sees her in those sad eyes. Her grip tightens. Her expression isn’t suited for her, it is too timid and too soft. And yet there is a flicker of fierceness behind those eyes. Something that still fights, perhaps a sparkle of resistance. 

He decides that he can’t leave. 

Not yet.


	2. A Conqueror Conquered

They have her strapped down again. Strapped down and confined to a bed in a white room and they leave her with time to think. To ruminate over how she had come to be there, how she had let herself fall so far. To dwell upon more recent humiliations. Granted it isn’t so bad this time but her stomach still flutters and her cheeks still flush when she thinks about it. About those manufactured feelings of affection.

It is hard for her to conceptualize that it had been her. That she had spent the night silently pining for the avatar and then mustered up the courage to embrace the man. She wonders what he must think of her now. She wonders if she should care. 

She knows that she has fallen from grace and is sinking further still. Her lapse in control has led to a much deeper more and more complete lack of control. 

She knows as well as anyone else that the dragon has been tamed, the conqueror has been conquered. 

Today is a free day, they give her at least one a week, where they leave her mind untampered with. Not that it is enough time for her to recover and regain her senses. She thinks that, that is how they want it; so even when they aren’t playing with her emotions, she is still left uncertain of them. Uncertainty becomes the only thing she is certain of, to the point where she is somehow uncertain of this. The paradox is maddening. It unravels her faster than anything else has and she concretely knows--as if she hadn’t already--that they have no investment whatsoever in helping her heal and find a place back in society. If anything, they seek to undo her so deeply that she never will. 

She is fairly certain that she is herself right now. Paranoid is the real her. The only feeling that is truly hers. It is the feeling that has landed her here. It is the feeling that she clings to. The insecurity of paranoia has become her only sense of security. If she is paranoid and afraid, she is aware. If she is aware than she is herself. And so fear becomes truly her as well. She will build her personality around feeling various degrees of afraid and persecuted. 

She wonders if paranoia truly is a sign of insanity if everything she is suspicious of is, in fact, as shady as she imagines. 

And so she might not be crazy at all. 

Not by nature. Not until they induce it. 

**.oOo.**

“Avatar.” She greets flatly at the sound of the door opening. She doesn’t turn to face him but she knows that it is him. He is the only one who bothers knocking. And his footsteps are so light that she almost can’t hear them even in the silence. 

She doesn’t want to speak with him. She finds that her face grows delicately pink whenever he is around and then redder still when her mind draws unprompted parallels to the feelings artificially instilled within her. 

She thinks of how she’d wrapped her arms around him. About how intense her longing for closeness had been. 

“What do you want me to feel today, Avatar?” She asks upon his arrival at her bedside. “I’ll spare you the trouble and try to act the part.” And perhaps she shouldn’t be so harsh. He doesn’t seem particularly comfortable either. 

He returns Ai-Emi’s--or maybe she had been Nari last night--embraces with a rigid awkwardness and a sheepish smile. With a hesitance and a flush of his own.

She considers for the first time that he might somehow be as captive as she.

“You can just be yourself, Azula.”

“And who is that?”

He presses opens his mouth and his expression dims. “You’re acting like yourself right now.” He tries a smile.

Her heart flutters at the reassurance. At the notion that she might truly be Azula for a change, even if it is only for a few hours. It flutters less pleasantly at the realization that she needs a second opinion to know who she is and when she is who she once was. 

“Have you come to change that?” She ought to be kinder to him, he is the only one who treats her with even an inkling of respect. Even still, she must compensate for Ai-Emi. She needs to make damn sure that the Avatar knows that she isn’t truly infatuated with him. 

“I came to ask you if you want to go for a walk.” He rebuffs her off handed question. “Sangyul is away and I convinced the other doctors to let you have some fresh air.”

Fresh air.

The sun.

She holds an arm out and observes the pallor of her skin. She looks sickly. Ghostly. She hasn’t had fresh air and sunlight in a very long time. She misses the warmth of it on her skin and is dreadfully disappointed when she arrives outside to a cloudy sky. She finds herself so overwhelmed with frustration that she nearly sheds tears. “Where’s the sun?” She whispers more to herself. 

“Sorry, I was trying to wait it out and see if it’d get sunnier but it has been like this all day.”

“Yeah…” she mutters, suddenly feeling tired all over again. “We can go back inside again.” 

Aang leads her to a bench. A gust runs through her hair. “I am not going to sit on a bench with you.” She says. 

He stands up and motions for her to sit. She takes a deep breath and sits. She wishes that he weren’t so tender with and considerate of her. She wishes that she could hate him so that she may never feel anything close to fondness of him. 

“If only I was allowed to hate you as much as you hate me.”

“Wh-why would you think that?”

“I would resent someone who killed me.” She shrugs. “I guess this isn’t entirely unwarranted. It isn’t commonplace to have such an opportunity to destroy an enemy so befittingly…”

“Azula, I don’t hate you.”

“Then why?” She mutters. “Why are you helping them.” 

“I’m trying to help you! So you can feel happy and relaxed.” 

“It isn’t real. The real me is…” she trails off. “I’d rather be irreparably out of my mind if it means that my mind is... _ my _ mind. If it’s going to be broken and distorted, I’d like it to be broken naturally.” 

“I didn’t say that there is something wrong with you. I just said that you have trouble feeling happy…”

“You’re saying that I’m depressed. Isn’t that the same as broken? And yes, Avatar, I’d rather be miserable than whatever the hell I am now.” She scoffs. The wind snaps her hair into her face and she brushes it back over her shoulders. “If you want me to feel ‘happy’ and ‘relaxed’ then take me home.”

“I can’t.”

She says nothing more to him. There is no sense. She will say plenty when they beckon it out of her. 

**.oOo.**

Sangyul arrives early and she takes the fall. It is just one more reason for her to loathe the Avatar with all of her soul. “Recreation time is up.” The man scowls. It takes only four simple words to have her roughly yanked from the bench. Aang flinches when the wrench her up. In her confinement she has grown frail and he knows that her wrists are going to bruise. 

Azula herself doesn’t flinch. Neither does she try to resist. She goes passive, it is easier that way. But their force is excessive anyways. Used for the sake of using it. He thinks the nurses like hurting her. Perhaps over some personal vendetta or perhaps it is simply because they have the power to do so. 

She can walk. She will walk willingly if they let her. But they don’t give her the chance. They drag her back into the building as she tries to stand and keep her knees from getting scrapped. Aang follows along asking them to just let her walk. 

“We can’t chance her making a break for it.” Sangyul shrugs. 

“If she was going to run, she would have done it when we were outside. While you were gone.” He thinks that, that might have been what he was hoping she’d have done. 

“No matter.” He waves Aang off. “She knows that she isn’t supposed to be outside.”

“She was promised an hour of recreation time each day!”

“That was before we found out that we were dealing with such a severe case.”

“Severe? She hasn’t…”

“Avatar Aang, with all do respect, you need to stop encroaching on matters that don’t concern you. She is a war criminal, need I remind you.” 

“She’s your patient. And I’m helping you treat her, I think that it does concern me.” Aang insists as they throw open the door to her room and shove her in. Her body meets the floor with a gut wrenching thud. 

“Your job is to handle her emotional wellbeing. We’ll handle her physical wellbeing.”

“You aren’t doing a good job.” Aang offers her a hand. She slaps it away. He cringes if for no other reason than knowing that she is only proving them right. He wonders if she thinks that snubbing him had been worth the straightjacket that they are squishing her into. 

“It doesn’t need to be so tight!” 

“We heard that she has a reputation for wiggling out of them.” Sangyul dismisses. “Take you leave, Avatar. Your services won’t be needed until tomorrow.” 

He sees the flash of a needle before it falls into Azula’s neck. She goes tense and then her body slackens. In minutes it is completely limp. He feels as though he is looking at a corpse. He can’t help but to think that, though she is alive, she is still a husk. 


	3. An Illusion Of Choice

They take her and strap her down before she awakens.They are gentle with her this time, but only so not to wake her before they finish binding her. This is how they always do it. Sedating her and then taking her is counterproductive, or so Sangyul says. “We’re going for authenticity, so we can’t have her all muddled by sedatives and drugs.” 

Aang thinks that this is an odd choice of words. There is nothing authentic about her treatment. 

He watches her blink awake as they fix a final metal plate over her mouth. They do it just on time to keep her from breathing fire, but not before she can muster a cry of distress and anger. “Alright, Avatar Aang. She’s all yours.”

He takes an anxious step closer to her and tries not to look her in the eye. Her stare is always so cutting and furious before he tampers with the spirit energy behind them. Sangyul adjusts the bands of spirit vine that he has placed over her head. Aang inhales through his nose and touches his fingers to her forehead. He draws another deep breath and his eyes meet hers. It is only for a flicker but in that flicker he sees both resignation and a conflicting dash of defiance. Or maybe he has mistaken hatred for defiance. 

He closes his own eyes and lets himself sink into the serenity that is the half state. Were he to open his eyes he would be able to see halos of color all over the spectrum. The nurses tend to have passive and stoic greys. Sangyul boasts the black-purple of ill-will and arrogance. Today, he has a small procrastinative peek, it is tinged with a fervent red. 

He doesn’t like to look at Azula’s aura, seeing it is almost worse than seeing the look on her face. It’s vivid brilliance has gone dull and muted. Once a tantalizing blend of passionate and powerful red, confident orange, and a delicate touch of soothing and intelligent blue it is now a dreary grey. The blue remains but it alludes to fear and a depressive apathy. 

He can’t see his own aura but he speculates that it might just look similar. He lets his spirit energy flow into her aura and into her mind. He braces himself for whiplash and the headache that comes with having to crumble her mental walls. Though it is more of an extinguishing; the wall that wraps around to protect her spirit is a fire as hotly blue as her physical bending. He doesn’t know why he still expects it to be there, he has watched it dwindle from a roaring blaze to a bonfire , to a campfire, to a candle glow, and then to nothing but embers. 

Even the embres have cooled to nothing. 

His spirit energy infringes upon hers with a stomach churning ease. 

A soft shimmer runs down the threads of her aura like a dew drop down grass. Starting from the front row and moving to the back, they flash and glint. It isn’t always like this, the patterns of the blinking and glimmering are like a fingerprint of sorts. When he had taken Ozai’s bending, his pattern was overwhelming; each thread with glint in an eye-searing uniformity before the glow fades for a moment. He thinks that it has to do with personality though he has hardly begun to theorize exactly why the blinks and flashes happen. He thinks that maybe it is more like a pulse; a sign that the person’s spirit energy is still tethered to them. But then, wouldn’t they beat in synchrony with the heart…

He cringes. He isn’t paying attention. Luckily has has only tainted one thread, it is a rather rich pink. The pink of affection and love. White, pure and innocent white is the intention. Physically he grits his teeth. Spiritually he retracts his fingers for a moment. He resolves to keep Azula’s aura as white as possible and keep the pink to a minimum. 

**.oOo.**

“Unbind me, Avatar.” She requests softly. “I’m not going to do anything.”

“I know.” Aang says.

“Can you loosen the straps a bit?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think that Sangyul will like that.” 

“I suppose.” 

The man steps back into the room. “Alright, Azula, how are you feeling?” 

“How you want me to, I suppose.”

His lip twitches. “We’ve discussed your sarcasm and witty quips. I suggest that you try to remember our conversation.” 

Azula nods. 

“Let’s try this again; how do you feel, Azula?”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure.” She also isn’t sure what he is playing at in asking for her opinion, she knows well that he doesn’t care in the slightest. “I’m going to free you from these restraints and you are going to follow me.” He turns to Aang. “I should like you to accompany us as well.” 

The straps fall away and she flexes her hands and fingers. She stretches her arms and legs and gets to her feet. They lead her down the hallway. “First we’re going to pick out something to wear.” He opens a door and gestures to the outfits spread out on the floor. “Pick one.”

She furrows her brows. “I get to pick?” 

“Of course.”

There is an itch in her mind, it tells her not to trust them. It tells her not to get her hopes up. It nags her as she looks over the outfits. They range from elegant and formal to casual and plain. There are some articles from the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe in the mix. But her eyes are drawn away from the Water Tribe furs, the fine Earth Kingdoms silks, and the extravagant Fire Nation kimonos to the expensive sets of armor. She misses wearing armor; misses the bulky feeling of protection, misses the powerful aesthetic it brings to her look, and--mostly--misses the confidence it instills within her.

There are several suits that stand out to her, one that is plain and sleek, not dissimilar to the one she used to wear. There is a second that has studs on the shoulder guards and jagged pieces that look like tongues of lightning for accents. There is another that bears the insignia of her nation. But the one she adores the most is the phoenix themed one. It does look rather heavy, but she isn’t actually going into battle so she can choose aesthetic over agility. She manages a soft smile and points at it, “that one.”

“Are you sure, Azula?” Sangyul asks.

She nods. 

“But it is awfully heavy, don’t you think? You aren’t exactly in shape…” 

She swallows. “I want that one.” She insists despite a flicker of doubt. It would be rather humiliating if she put it on just to complain that it is too heavy for her more feeble condition. “I suppose that, that one is nice too.” She points to the one accented with lightning filigree. 

Sangyul scratches his chin. “Yes, that one would probably be a better choice. But I think that you should try one of these.” He gestures to the Earth Kingdom silks and Fire Nation fineries. 

They aren’t awful, she doesn’t exactly mind getting herself nice and pretty every now and again, but she is in the mood for something bolder. She casts a glance at the armor. “I suppose that it is a bit impractical to wear armor outside of battle.”

“Yes!” Sangyul declares. “Exactly! Now which would you like, Earth Kingdom or Fire Nation?” 

She brushes her hand over a Fire Nation festival kimono. 

“Nurse Hanaki will show you to the changing room.” 

She finds that by changing room, he had meant taking her behind a four-panel folding screen.

It isn’t comfortable having the nurse stand there and watch her but it is better than having Sangyul, his team, and the Avatar gawking at her. “Can you turn around?” She requests. 

Hanaki gives an awkward shuffle. “I can’t risk turning my back on you.”

Azula turns away from her and with as much haste as she can manage swaps her current outfit for the new one. The nurse helps her tighten her obi and leads her back out. 

“Wonderful.” Sangyul replies. “I think that you made the right decision with that outfit. I think that we should apply some makeup to match.”

She almost smiles, she does miss having a touch of makeup, but she doesn’t even begin to smile before realizing that there is probably a catch. She knows that a touch of makeup is going to turn into more makeup than she has ever worn or has had a desire to wear. And by the time they are done with her face, it is accented in away that she almost can’t recognize. It is a dangerous thing, she thinks. She doesn’t feel like herself and now she doesn’t look like herself. 

Her stomach flutters as her mind starts to make the separation. 

“Now, let's discuss your hair.” 

She jolts. She is grateful for the jolt, it brings her, to some degree, back to herself. She reflexively pulls a good portion of her locks and holds them against her chest. He leads her to a mirror and hands her a pair of scissors. 

She looks at her reflection and then scissors in her hand. She likes how her reflection looks now, how her hair falls in thick and elegant waves. How her bangs so nicely frame her face, giving her delicate features a sharper edge. She isn’t sure that she’d like how she’d look with shorter hair. 

“Go on, Azula.” Sangyul coaxes. “Cut your hair. Just under the chin will do.” 

She peers at the boy next to her and whispers, “I don’t think that this is what I really want, Aang.” 

She can see Aang’s heart sinking in his eyes. “I don’t think that it is either.”

“Azula.” Only her father has ever spoken to her like that. So low, so cautionary. 

She raises the scissors and cuts the smallest fragment of hair away and repeats on the next side. She watches the strands fall to the floor and her mind shifts again. It shifts to a night in her bedroom. A night when a disheveled reflection stared back at her. She puts the scissors down and allows the pricks of anger in her aura to unfurl. “I like it long.”

“Azula.” Sangyul warns again. He is in her face now.

“I like it long.” She repeats flatly. 

She feels the sting of his slap. “Cut. It.” The man growls. “Or so help me.” 

Shock, it must be shock. 

Whatever it is, those pinpricks of anger retract and she feels somewhat dizzy. 

She feels the scissors being pressed into her hand again. “Cut. Your. Hair.” 

She swallows. “Yes, father.”


	4. A Dragon Beaten

She nearly cries when full lucidity comes back to her. Her hair is so short. For her weakness, she is every bit the disgrace that it indicates. She supposes that she doesn’t deserve to fashion her hair into its topknot. She should have fought back. She should have put up more resistance. She rubs her hands over her face. 

Her stomach is already queasy and it grows queasier still when it fully registers just what had happened. Just what she had said. 

Azula sneers, as she recalls the man’s smirk. That sick satisfaction that had come from her submission. She feels doubly anxious knowing that he has, without particularly trying, found a weakness to exploit. She rubs her hands over her face a second time, feeling more resigned than before. 

“Hi, Azula.” Aang greets sheepishly. He hands her a plate. She doesn’t look at the food before shoving it away. 

“I’m sorry about…”

“Don’t.” She scoffs. 

“I really do want to help you…”

“Oh you’ve  _ helped  _ very much.”

“I’m trying to actually help. I don’t hate you and I don’t want you to hate me.”

Azula’s lips curve into a smirk that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She reaches her hand out and slowly, tentatively brushes her thumb over his cheek. She feels him cringe. “Don’t worry, Avatar.” She drawls. “If you pull the right strings, the right way, I won’t.” 

He flinches back. “That’s not what I want.” 

“Then what do you want, Avatar?”

“I already told you that I want to--”

“You are helping, Avatar. You’re helping them.” She gives a dismissive wave. “So why don’t you get back to it?”

“Why did you call him, ‘father’?” 

Azula tenses. “Because _ you’ve _ been ravaging my mind since I got here.” The lie so easily slips from her lips. And perhaps because it is partially true. She can’t imagine that reality would have distorted that far from her, had she not been reduced to Nari again. But that it had come out at all...she shudders. It wouldn’t have if the foundations weren’t there. 

“Your dad treated you like that?”

“Leave me.” 

“Because if he did, you can talk to me about it.”

Leave. Me.” She half-growls. 

She waits until the door closes behind him before she folds in on herself and cries. Clearly she isn’t as lucid as she had imagined. Azula doesn’t cry. Azula is not a crier. Azula is not this weak. She is not Azula. 

**.oOo.**

“Why are we trying to make her submissive again.” Aang throws his hands up. He is afraid to look at Azula and gauge her reaction. “Shouldn’t I try to make her feel happy? That’s what I was sent here to do. Help her recover.”

The man sighs. “Avatar, in order for that to work, we have to make her submit. Do you think that she will let you induce happiness without...softening her to the idea?”

“Haven’t you considered that she might  _ want  _ to be happy  _ on her own _ and that we don’t have to force her to want to be?” He asks. “Why do  _ I _ have to tamper with her spirit energy to make her happy? Why can’t I just, I don’t know, talk to her?”

Sangyul roles his eyes. “Clearly you have not worked with her very closely. She’s stubborn and impossible. You have to give her at least a little push to get her to open up.”

“Fine!” Aang throws his hands up. “Then why don’t we do that? Why don’t I give her a little push and then talk to her…”

“Because that’s tedious. I think that the Fire Lord is hoping for a speedy recovery and this has already been going on for too long.”

“I don’t think that Zuko cares how fast or slow her recovery is. He just wants her to get better.”

Sangyul pinches the bridge of his nose. “Have you tried talking to her about her...complex?” 

“Wha-what?”

“Have you confronted Azula about calling me her father? How did that go for you? I imagine that she was  _ very receptive _ and  _ open  _ to that discussion.” 

Aang swallows. “That’s because I have to start smaller. I think that maybe the person I should be talking to about that is you!” 

Sangyul quirks a brow.

“If you’re bad enough that she’d compare you to  _ Ozai _ , maybe  _ you’re  _ the problem.”

“Or maybe, she is insane and draws parallels where there are none. Perhaps, you’re the same as she. Should I have you evaluated, Avatar? We’re trying to help her and you’re throwing baseless accusations at us.”

“Baseless?”

“Let’s go over what happed yesterday. I gave her a chance to get out of her room, get dressed up, put on some makeup, and fix her hair up nicely. We don’t do that for all of our patients.”

“But you didn’t give her a…”

“Choice? But I did, I asked her which outfit she’d like to wear.”

“And then you…”

“Made a suggestion and she  _ decided  _ to take it. The decision was hers. You’re paranoia is not healthy, Avatar Aang. Not for you and not for her. One of the reasons that she is here with us is because she has all of these delusions and warped fantasies. She thinks that everyone is out to assassinate her. The last thing she needs is for you to feed these delusions.” 

Aang swallows. 

“If you want to help her, you’ll go out there and start...softening her up.” 

**.oOo.**

This time she puts up a fight. She has to, she can already hear him asking her to talk about her father. And she can hear herself spilling every little detail. She can’t let that happen. In her mind, she throws her fire up as far as she can manage. But she cannot lift it high enough. The Avatar leaps over it and his phantasmal fingers, once again stroke and caress her aura until it is tickled the right shade of white. This time he doesn’t slip any pink into the mix. 

It matters not, she feels herself fading into the background as another version of her steps forward. Distantly in her mind she thinks that, perhaps, she is the version to be coaxed forward. That this immaculately white aura is her default. Really, it makes sense--she is certain that everyone is born with a pure white aura. Maybe Nari is real and Azula is the illusion. Maybe it is better that way; she is certain that Nari is more desirable. More likeable. And so Azula slips into the background, into the dark recesses of her own mind, where she belongs.

Like clockwork, the transition is fuzzy as her awareness comes back. This is always the worst part, coming to and feeling the binds biting against her wrists. She can never seem to shake the momentary sense of panic, the crawling and reeling of her belly. “Avatar?” 

“Yeah?”

She takes a deep breath. Her distress beginning to subside.

“Where’s Sangyul?”

“He said that he has to do something and he wants me to talk to you until you get back.” 

“About my father?”

“Is that what you want to talk about.” 

She shakes her head. 

“Then we don’t have to.”

But there is a part of her that itches to talk about it. Yearns to let it out and reach out for some sort of reassurance. “Sometimes when he gets angry…”

Aang raises a hand. “You said that you didn’t want to talk about it.” 

Azula swallows. 

“So lets talk about something else. Did these guys ever try to help you? Has being here done anything good for you?” 

She thinks for a moment. “At first, I guess. Before doctor Anshin left. He was...alright. They let me go outside more. The food was better.” 

“Were you happier?”

She furrows her brows. “I...I don’t think so. I’m not a happy person. But I was less unhappy.” She reconsiders. “Unless you count those times when you…”

“I don’t.” He says. “I meant if you felt happy on your own. When was the last time you felt happy on your own?” 

She thinks again, rubbing her hands over her face. She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t know. She isn’t sure if it is that she doesn’t know, doesn’t remember, or simply was never happy. She finds herself feeling both sorrowful and angry. Helpless and anxious. Her lower lip trembles and her breathing quickens. A orange-red glimmer within tells her that she needs to pull herself together before she makes a fool of herself. It is overtaken and conquered by white before it has a chance to branch out. This shift hikes her nerves even further. 

“Do you need me to calm you down? I can calm you down if you need that?”

Her spirit energy is already twisted and distorted, knotted in a way that she can’t quite understand much less untangle. She knows that letting him in a second time will only bind it tighter. But, Agni, does she need something to take the edge off. 

At her nod, those spectral fingers are gently working with the threads. She expects a pure yellow shot of happiness, instead he mixes the blue of serenity with a dash of yellow--a preventative measure, she is well aware that pure blue usually leaves her feeling melancholy--and a touch of turquoise. She isn’t sure what turquoise means. 

But this time when she fully emerges into the world outside of her mind, her breathing is even and her body is significantly less tense. Perhaps she should ask him to mix blue with white every time. 

“Better?” 

“Much.”

“Were you ever happy, Azula?” 

“I think so.” It is a weighted question. “Usually in short bursts. Sometimes I think that I thought I was happy when I wasn’t.” She closes her eyes and lays back, hands clasped over belly as she waits for the last of the nervous tickles to subside. 

**.oOo.**

Aang thinks that he ought to stop asking questions. He is plenty aware that Azula wouldn’t be so freely offering these personal details were it not for his own intervention. Only after having done it does it occur to him that he has just figured out exactly how to give Sangyul what he wants. 

Relaxation is the key. 

“I think that…”

“Azula, can we talk about something else.” 

She fixes him with a perplexed stare. “But I thought…”

“Not right now.” He smiles. “If you still want to talk about this later, we can.” 

“Then what are we going to talk about?”

“Do you prefer stories about Sokka embarrassing himself at a poetry reading or one about being stuck in a cave with singing nomads?” 

“Depends, are you actually going to be singing?” 

“I sure will!”

“Poetry it is.” 

“Hey!” 

She smiles. It is the sort of smile that reaches her eyes. It is warm and gentle. He wishes that it was real.

“Follow me, Azula.” She flinches at the sound of his voice. 

“I was going to tell her a story.”

Sangyul looks anything but entertained. 

“It makes her happy. That’s what we’re trying to do. So let me finish.” Aang insists. 

“Avatar, a foolish story isn’t going to fix years of alleged abuse and trauma.”

“And what you’re about to do will?”

“It will be a step in the right direction. Azula, stand up and follow me.” 

“You can tell me the story another time, Aang. Thank you.” His heart aches as she rises. The unease swelling in his tummy is nauseating. 

“You can stay put.” Sangyul says to him. “We shouldn’t be long. I’d just like to talk to her alone.” The sound of the door closing behind him leaves Aang feeling hollow with dread. He lets a critical ten minutes go by before he slips out of the room and follows the sound of Sangyul’s voice. 

“Now let’s try something else. Something a little less superficial.”

Aang hears the slightest whimper. He cringes. And when he throws the door open, he makes no attempt to mask his intent. “What are you doing to her?”

“ _ I’m _ not doing anything to her.”

“It sounds like you’re hurting her.” 

“Well  _ I _ am not.”

He balls his fists, he hasn’t even looked over at her. 

Sangyul takes a step closer and leans in. Lowly, as though it matters to him whether or not Azula hears, he says “she’s been particularly susceptible today. Did you do something different?”

“No.” 

“Perhaps a different combination of emotions?”

He feels as though he is speaking with Kho. The slightest hitch of his voice will cost him everything. Will cost Azula everything. “Not that I know of.” 

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all. You didn’t leave me with her long enough.” 

“Hmm.” Sangyul rises back to his full height and claps his hands behind his back. “At any rate, I suggest that you leave again. I will proceed weather you do or not”

“Proceed with what?” He finally tears his eyes away from the doctor and peeks at Azula. In her hand she holds a small blade, there is a small and thin line drawn upon the palm of her other. “What did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything, did I, Azula?”

Azula shakes her head. 

“Who did that?”

“I did.” Azula answers. 

“And you’re going to do it again. This time…” He trails a finger just under his eye. “Right there. It doesn’t have to be deep.” 

“Azula don’t!” Aang calls as she lifts her hand. 

“Go on, Azula.” His voice is low again. And by the spirits, he does sound like Ozai when he does that. It is more than enough. She traces the blade over her pale skin. A small cut as delicate is the flesh it is torn into. 

Sangyul tilts his head slightly up, “fascinating. Avatar, are you sure that you didn’t do  _ anything  _ different?”

“I’m certain.” 

The man turns his attention back on Azula. “You haven’t used your fire in a while, Azula. Would you like to?” 

She nods vigorously. 

“Go on.” 

She holds her hand out, Aang notices that it is trembling ever so slightly. For the first time in ages he sees a brilliant flame. Her brows knit and her breathing quickens again. “No.” She mummers. “No. No.” She lets the fire die and brings it to her palm again, each time her no is louder. And then she looks up and away from her fire. Up at Sangyul with such a simmering loathing. A wrath so deep and so intense that it can only be a resurgence of the real her. 

It is the re-awakening of a dragon that has been kicked and beaten in its sleep. 

But it isn’t the Azula he is used to. It starts as a roar and builds into a scream as she throws her fire over Sangyul and the nurse nearest to him. The man throws himself to the floor as the nurse seem to bathe in it. But only for a moment before she realizes that her target has moved away. The nurse falls to the floor writhing. Two more of them, one is a man more than twice the princess’ weight. He tackles her to the floor, his grip is crushing, Aang thinks that he hears a snap or a crunch. The man is straddling her, pinning her hands above her head. She struggles, wincing and wheezing.

“She can’t breath!” Aang shouts. 

Sangyul moves to hover over her, to look her in the eye as her vision starts to dim. Even still the smaller nurse feels obligated to prick her with the sedative. Azula’s struggles slow and her limbs go limp. Her fury fully extinguished just as quickly as it had come over her and Aang isn’t sure if the sedative had simply acted that fast or it is the result of cut breathing. 

“Take her to her room and get that feral bitch a straight jacket.” Sangyul snarls. 

Aang isn’t sure what he is playing at when he says, “I told you that I didn’t do anything different today.” 

“Get out of my sight, Avatar. And come back when you can do your job right.” 

“I’d rather not do a ‘right’ job when the job is wrong.” 

Sangyul looks up and gives a soft chuckle, his anger seeming to cool. “My apologies, Avatar. I shouldn’t speak to you like that. Your services are very important and I don’t think that Azula would take well to you leaving.” 

“I think that she hates me because of what I’m doing to her.” He pauses. “So I’m not going to do it anymore. You’re going to let me help her the right way. Without spirit vines.” 

Sangyul paces back and forth for a moment, rubbing a hand through his slicked back locks. “Well how about this, Avatar. You keep doing what we ask of you or we might decide that the princess is too dangerous to work with. It might happen that she threatens me and I am forced to resort to drastic measures. It would be unfortunate if she had a meltdown and I had to kill her in an attempt to fend her off.” He pauses and comes to loom before Aang with his hands clasped behind his back. “And what I ask of you now is that you take her bending. Her little outburst was a fluke and we can’t have another incident like that.”

Aang’s mouth runs dry. 

“So what do you say, Avatar? She’s sleeping nice and peacefully, you can just pluck it right out of her, no resistance. And then we can work on figuring out how to do away with that...dangerous part of her. Though I have a feeling that she’ll be a lot more...receptive to treatment. without her flame.” 


	5. Suffocating Black

He feels sick as he brings his fingers to her forehead. Sick and strangely calm. Azula doesn’t move at all. He tries not to look her in the eyes, those hazy, resigned eyes. He can’t really look at her face at all, seeing the stark red line beneath her eye is nearly as bad as seeing the unhealthy indifference in her eyes. He knows just what he is about to do to her. He knows that the light won’t return to those eyes after it is done. His queasiness doubles until he thinks that he very well may throw up. “I don’t want to do this.” 

Sangyul stands with his chest puffed up and his arms collapsed behind his back, mouth pressed into a stern thin line. 

Aang takes a deep breath before proceeding to paint Azula’s aura from a deep grey to pure white. He doesn’t think that he has to, she has gone passive and subdued all on her own. He isn’t sure if it has more to do with what she has already been subjected to or what she will soon be exposed to. He watches her go from truly passive to innocently passive. Almost childlike. 

Very childlike. 

In her aura he detects speckles of the blue of fear, he doesn’t have to coax these. His heart clenches. 

He presses his fingers more firmly against her forehead and silently hopes that she will offer just as much resistance as her father had.

**.oOo.**

His phantasmal fingers, as per routine, are stroking and plucking at her spirit energy. It is different this time, harsher and all encompassing. Overwhelming and...painful? Yes, it is painful, a very strange and unique kind of pain. She can’t quite articulate it, she knows it is pain but it is a numb sort. A kind that she almost doesn’t feel. She thinks that she only feels it at all because she is aware that it is there. 

It is overwhelming.

She watches as fingers of light blue shot with grey begin to strangle her own light. This time they don’t pluck or pull, in fact, they ignore the aura threads entirely. They leave her mind and find their way into the pit of her stomach. A fluttery, tickly, dread builds there alongside the fingers of energy. 

Also present is a large, phantom fire. It burns white hot with a pride inducing intensity. She wills it to flare up as the spectral hand reaches for it. It reflexively retracts as the fire bites it and for a moment she thinks that she has won but then it plunges itself right back into the flames. Its touch is icy and she thinks that her physical body has shuddered. 

She tries. Tries like she hasn’t tried in ages, to expel the foreign energy. The invasive spirit that is not her own. The fingers close around her fire and it begins to sputter and suffocate. The hue of her aura glows a deeply depressing blue. 

Her physical body cries as her astral one weakens. Dulls, dims, and distorts into a hallow parody of itself. The interloping energy chokes her inner flame until it can resist no further. The space on the astral plane that her fire once lit goes black and with it her aura. 

Decidedly she is a husk, there is nothing left of Azula. 

**.oOo.**

He retracts feeling heavy, burdened. 

Azula’s eyes are open, they are fixed on the ceiling. A single tear slips down her cheek. For a moment he thinks that he has killed her. Her eyes have dulled enough for him to think so. He feels for a pulse and finds it. It is the only thing that beats strongly in her. 

“Get up.” Sangyul demands of her. 

She is unresponsive. 

“Avatar, get her up and take her to her room.” 

She is deadweight. He resorts to scooping her into his arms. He doesn’t like how it feels to hold her when her arms and legs hang limp and her head falls back without her to support it. He only knows that she is alive by the steady rising and falling of her chest. And he knows that he is going to have to do this all on his own. 

At least for the time being.

He hustles past her room and peeks down the hallway. It is vacant. Mercifully so. He isn’t sure what he will say if he runs into someone else. He thinks that he might have to resort to something more drastic than words and is half-prepared to do something that the Air Monks would frown and bow their heads at. 

He peers at Azula and decides that he already has. 

He navigates the maze of the facility, avoiding the main hallways and the ones that lead to places like the dinner hall. Azula is beginning to feel heavy in his arms. He slips into a supply closet to catch his breath and rest his arms. 

“Azula.” He whispers. “I need you to walk with me.” 

She remains where he has set her down, unmoving, and unmotivated. 

“Please, just help me do this and it’ll be okay. I promise.” 

Nothing. 

She is gone, truly gone. He doesn’t think that there is even a flicker of Azula left in the body that he hoists back into his arms. He feels queasy and he wonders if he has done something that he won’t be able to fix. Wonders if this is all for nothing. 

He is almost certain that he has when he, at last, slips out of the compound. When the light of day warms Azula’s face and she doesn’t seem to feel a thing. When he looks into her eyes and sees nothing at all behind them. 

He looks back and he knows that they have realized that he has not taken her back to her room.

“I can fix this.” He tries to rouse and convince her. He says it again and again as he runs further and further from the facility. “I can fix this.” She doesn’t believe him and neither does he. 


	6. Cold Cinders

The world passes by in smudges of green and blue and brown. The rush of trees, mud, and sky as they fall behind. But mostly her world is grey, even the most vivid of the blues and greens and the purples of the odd flower are dulled. Her world is muted and she can’t bring herself to care. She isn’t sure if there is anything to gain by caring.

The wind is warm on her face. The sun through the canopy is warmer still. Warmer and loving as the rays caress her cheeks. But she is beyond feeling things like affection and hope. She knows that she should be thrilled to see the light of day and see so much of it. For a flicker she tries to muster up joy. That flicker passes as the leaves rustle. 

She isn’t sure how long he has been running for, she isn’t sure how he isn’t yet tired of carrying her but he finally comes to a stop. He sets her down, propping her up against a tree trunk before making his way to the water. The sound is quite lovely, a soft burbling with a plop every now and again. Sometimes a bird will add to the music of the jungle. Distantly, a small waterfall churns and stirs the lake. And every once and a while she will hear something small, likely a toad-squirrel, skitter through the brambles creating such a soft and alluring ambiance. She closes her eyes, she would like them to remain that way. 

After a few minutes she hears him shuffling towards her, his hand falls on her shoulder and she opens one eye. He gives her a slight smile and brings a makeshift waterskin to her lips. She knows that he is using his shirt because she can taste him in the water, but can’t muster up the ability to be disgusted by it. 

“It’s exciting to be outside again, isn’t it?” 

She stares at her palms. When she looks back up, she finds that his eyes have dimmed. 

“It’s really warm.” He tries again.

Yet she feels no warmth at all. She is so, so cold, right from her very core. She presses her hand to her belly, hovers it over her fire chakra as though she can poke or prod it to life. 

There is nothing left of it to rekindle and she has no matches to strike. 

She closes her eyes again.

She thinks that they should keep running, keep putting distance between themselves and the facility. But then, what is the point? They have taken everything from her. They have accomplished what they had aspired to achieve; they have taken her essence. They have taken  _ her _ . 

They might as well have her body too. 

**.oOo.**

Aang swallows as he observes the princess. He finds that there isn’t much to observe at all; she has barely moved at all; only her hand slides down to her stomach. And he isn’t even sure that it is anything more than a reflex. She isn’t supporting her own weight, if the tree were to gather its roots and step to the side, she would flop right over and she wouldn’t get back up. He thinks that the only thing that separates her from a corpse is the steady rise and fall of her chest. 

He has an urge to take her into his arms and run his hands over her hair. He can’t imagine that she would take it well. He shudders, as he comes to decide that she probably wouldn’t react to it in any sort of way at all. 

He knows what he has to do but he doesn’t think that it will be enough anymore. He wanders back to the water’s edge, sits down, and plants his feet in the crystalline water, feeling the sand and eroded pebbles between his toes. It smells like seaweed and banana tree. He too closes his eyes. 

He shuts them and shuts the world out as best as he is able. The ebbing of the creek steals his regrets and, for the time, carries them downstream and away from him. The wind, as it whistles by his ears, blows his anxieties safely away. He savors the way it wisps like soft bison fur or threads of seaweed on his face. Basks in the way it rustles the small hairs on his arms, the strands that have grown on his head that he hasn’t found the time to shave away. The rustle of the leaves drowns out the shouting voice of his anger.

He inhales deeply and exhales again. Inhales again, the world smells of life, of wildflowers and fresh fruit. It smells of hope, he thinks that hope has its own unique scent, though he isn’t sure exactly what it is. Peace also has its own unique odor, never has he smelled it as strongly as he had in the days after Sozin’s comet had come to pass.

But he smells hints of it now and he lets it carry him away into the Spirit World, he has questions to ask and answers to chase down. The babble of the water, palm fronds beating against palm fronds, and crabs scuttling over seastones carry his spirit off and away. 

He might fret over Azula had the wind now gust his worries away.

At any rate, he can’t imagine that she’d be taking off on her own.. 

**.oOo.**

Sleep comes easily to her. More easily than it has in months. Mayhaps it is because she so terribly yearns for it. Or because there really is nothing left for her to do. It takes her in arms that are much kinder and warmer than she has know before. It wraps her in gossamer blankets and carries her off. Off to a friendlier place.

A place where she still feels the faintest pulse, even if it is only the smallest fragment of an ember. 

In her mind’s eye, she watches it spark several times but it never quite ignites. In her mind’s eye, her aura dances. It dances in bleak shades of grey and black and a dismal, forlorn shade of navy blue. A blue more akin to deep sunset than what her fire once was. 

She watches her aura dim at the mention. It swirls and stirs until a face appears. It is her father and Sangyul at the same time; occupying the same space in the same moment in a way that can only be in a horrific nightmare. 

“What are you now?” They ask. “Nothing at all.” And then they step back. “You are mine.” They insist. She thinks that she always was; considers that there was never truly an Azula to wipe away at all. That she was always some extension of her father. So maybe Sangyul hasn’t done her any wrong at all. At least not in that regard. She casts a look back at the pile of ashes. They no longer smoke. She takes them in her hand, they have gone cold. 

“You know what to do.” Ozai says.

“Do as we did a few days ago.” Sangyul coaxes. 

It appears in her hand, she feels the weight of it’s metal. 

“Go on.” They both say. “You’ve done it before.”

And they are right, she has always bled for her father before. What difference would it make to bled for him again. If she bled for both of them. She raises the blade to the soft part of her neck and takes pause. Something in her, something foolish and naive, waits either of them--for her father mostly--to tell her to pick a different spot. 

She looks up and her aura shifts, their face distorts for a moment before coming back into a more human alignment. Their eyes bare into her. She swallows, the knife gives a small nip. It is alarmingly not unpleasant. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so hard to bleed for them again. 

But she hears it, ever so faintly. So quietly, in fact, that she doesn’t think she has heard it at all. But it comes again, a soft pop. 

“Look at me, Azula.” They say as she slightly turns her head. She looks back at them. They are furious now and she doesn’t understand; she hasn’t done anything this time. 

That is it. She hasn’t done anything. She presses the knife a bit harder to her neck. This time it stings. 

The crackling draws her attention again, this time she lowers her knife to look. 

“Azula.” They growl slowly. Dangerously. 

She takes a step towards the ruins of her fire. If it isn’t aglow, then why does it crackle? She drops to her knees in front of it. And then she sees it. It is such a meager thing and it is only a pitiful orange but it flickers deep down in the fire pit. 

The waves of her aura flare up, “pick the knife up, Azula.” They demand of her, voices cool and slick as they weave in and out of one another. “Pick it up and do as you're told. Pick it up and…” 

Another face appears in her aura. A white amid the black but she hates it all the same. She can’t seem to close her eyes so she turns back to her fire pit. 

“Look at me!” They roar over the fire. “Look at me. Now!”

She stands and steps into the fire. She’ll let it burn her down to her bones before she turns around. She’ll let it melt her eyes away before she spares them another look. And it does, oh Agni, it does. 


	7. The Smallest Glows

She still feels hazy and out of sorts even hours into their trek. She hasn’t spoken a word but Aang keeps the conversation going. He is so adamant about how pleased he is to see her walking on her own. He tries to rouse her with a jest about how she is heavy and hard to carry. She doesn’t take the bait.

“Want to stop for a break?” He offers. 

Azula considers. Her feet are rather sore and she is growing somewhat hungry but she still wants to put space between herself and that loathsome facility and those hateful people and the uninvited memories that come with them. They have long since made it past the point of being easily found, even still it doesn’t feel like there is enough distance. She isn’t sure that she will ever get far enough for the paranoia to leave her mind. 

“I think that we should take a break.” He says. 

“Are you asking me if I want one or are you telling me that you want one?”

“Both.”

“I can’t imagine that you won’t make the decision for me.”

He winces, “it’s your choice.”

“I’d like to keep going.” 

“Are you sure. It might be good to get something to snack on and rest up…”

Azula tenses. “I’m sure!” She snaps. “Don’t tell me what  _ I _ want.”

Aang lifts his hands. “I wasn’t. I just thought that you might be tired because you’ve been through a lot and I don’t want you to over…”

“I don’t need your suggestions.  _ I _ know what I want.  _ I _ know what’s best for me.” Maybe if she insists as much hard enough she’ll grow confident in it. 

“Are you absolutely sure?”

She swallows, “I…” But maybe he is right, maybe she should slow herself down. It has been ages since she has done this much walking. Ages since she has done anything but lay around, take orders, and permit them to ravage her mind. Suffering had become her only form of activity. For it, she does feel slightly winded and there is a gentle but persistent stitch in her side. “Maybe we should stop.” 

And Aang does, he stops and goes tense all over. “Actually, we can keep going. You’ve been keeping up well enough.” He resumes his walk and she follows in suit. Follows silently. But now she can’t get it out of her mind that she might have made the wrong call. That she might be pushing her body too hard, too soon. 

“Let me know when you want to stop.” Aang says. 

For a long time she says nothing at all. Nothing until the sun begins to sink.They have been traveling all day and for it her legs and sides ache. And her feet are absolutely killing her. Potent reminders that she is out of both shape and practice. She supposes that she should be happy that she can still manage such a long journey at all. “We should stop here.”

Aang laughs, “I was hoping you’d say that. I’m exhausted.” 

“You are?”

“Aren’t you?” He asks. “We’ve been walking for miles.”

“Yes, where are we going anyways?” Azula sidesteps the question.

Aang rubs the back of his head. “To be honest, I was just trying to make sure that we weren’t being followed.” 

She guesses that, that is fair enough but really it does them no good to be lost in a jungle with no supplies at all. She also gathers that it is partially on her for lapsing into a state of catatonia. “Do you know where we are?”

Aang shakes is head. “But I can find out. I managed to grab this before finding you.” He opens his glider. 

“Don’t let them see you.” 

“I won’t.” 

**.oOo.**

When he comes back down from the treetops, he sees her flicking a little flame back and forth. And then she makes several of them, one for each of her fingers. He doesn’t think that she has noticed his descent. He observes her as she watches the flames dance. They glow on her nails as they would on candlewicks. A soft and warm orange. He feels a sudden pang for her. He isn’t sure if she is bothered by their new, more ordinary hue, or if she is just relieved to have fire on her fingers at all. 

“Maybe tomorrow we can make some time for you to do some real firebending?”

She is quiet for a very long time. “Perhaps.”

“I thought that you’d be thrilled for a chance to use your fire again.”

She shrugs and he isn’t sure how to take it. One by one she lets the flames on her fingers flicker into smoke. He watches her lay back, eyes fixed on the stars. He wonders what is running through her head now that it is free of him. Free of his influence.

He thinks that it is a nice night out and that the stars above are probably a sublime and soothing sight for her after so many months of staring at an overwhelmingly white ceiling. He lets his spirit energy shift ever so slightly and he can see her aura outlining the whole of her body. It is still muted and still grey but those greys are being overpowered by the slowly encroaching browns of insecurity and confusion. Just before he draws back he catches the faintest glimpse of something new; a few specks of purple. Ambitious and royal purple. 

He dares a soft smile. The purple is there, it is something to work with. Maybe, given time, he can drive the greys and browns away for blues and oranges and a healthy splash of red. And this time he will do it the right way. 

“Azula?” He begins. He stops himself short hearing a sleepy murmur. She never struck him as a sleep talker. He might have tucked her in if he’d had any blankets. Instead he props himself up against a tree and keeps watch until he can keep his eyes open no more.

**.oOo.**

She doesn’t feel quite so sore when she wakes. In fact, she feels almost reinvigorated. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, inhaling the jungle air. It is so fresh and clean. She very much welcomes it after such a long time of breathing in the same stale air. 

She is hesitant to say that she feels good, but she doesn’t feel quite so awful today. She refuses to let herself get attached to the relief, she knows that it will be short lived as soon as she tries bending and finds that she can’t do as much as she had before, or at the very least won’t have the stamina for it. She looks herself over and knows that all that she has worked for has gone to waste. Her arms lack the definition she had prided herself on and her legs aren’t so toned. She has grown lanky and weak. Already she has soiled her decent mood, though it couldn’t have been all that decent if it were so easy to squander. 

She stands up, stretches, and sighs. She is going to have to get the first time over with eventually. She supposes that she’d rather work through her despair and frustration while the Avatar is slumbering. 

She finds herself glad that she had. 

She closes her eyes and breathes deeply in several times. It is familiar and comforting. She steps forward and stoops down, holding her arm slightly behind her. As she rises she throws her arm up in an elegant arc of flame. Her stomach drops and dread forms a bubble in her throat. What she created wasn’t an arc. It could hardly be called firebending at all. It could be called embarrassing. Useless. Pathetic. 

A small burst that dissipated into nothing almost as soon as it had come forward. 

She sinks to the ground, draws her knees up, and hugs them to herself. She is so cold with unease and dissatisfaction that she can’t even hope to give it a second try. What have they done to her? What has she allowed them to do to her? She rubs her hands over her face as it truly settles in; even escaping Sangyul’s grasp won’t be enough to get rid of the imprints he left on her mind. Even fleeting that facility won’t bring Azula back. She is certain that she no longer knows who Azula is. 


	8. For Too Long

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8 chapters in, I guess we were kind of due for the boring filler/transitional chapter sooner or later.

Aang knows that he is seeing something that he isn’t supposed to. Though he think that he has seen plenty of that already--really, what is one more thing? Azula leans against a tree with her face buried in her knees, the aura that ebbs off of her is duller than it is more heavily brown than he has seen it in a long while and he doesn’t understand. She is free of his hold; free of Sangyul’s influence. 

He knows that he ought to keep his distance, that he should return to his place by the tree and pretend to be asleep. But he can’t bring himself to do it. If he leaves her to fester in whatever it is, he doesn’t think that he will be able to bring her out of it.

He takes a deep breath before quietly approaching. He lingers over her for an uncomfortable while, until it becomes apparent that she hasn’t taken notice of him or is pretending that she hasn’t. He finds himself a seat next to her and give a small throat clear. The only indication that she has heard him comes as a hitch of her breathing. 

“Azula, what’s wrong?”

He expects a snappish and biting reply or perhaps something cold and dismissive. He isn’t ready for her to fix him with a dim stare and softly mumble, “why did you take it?”

He supposes that it was a long time coming, he is rather surprised that she hadn’t asked him significantly sooner.

“Because I knew that I could give it back.” He replies. 

“You wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t taken it in the first place.”

“And Sangyul wouldn’t have left me alone with you if I didn’t give him a reason to feel safe.”

She musters up a small smirk only for a flicker before it fades away. He thinks that she was going for one of her slow and suave drawls. “I didn’t realize that you were the sly and crafty sort.” It falls short, somehow sounding twice as dreary as her first remark.

He shrugs. “I guess that you were molding me too.” He can tell that his joke has fallen just as short. 

“Hardly.” She frowns. 

**.oOo.**

It is more like he has syphoned her abilities away from her and used them against her and now he is here acting as though he is some sort of hero, like he has whisked her away from a horrible man. As though he had been planning to do so all along. 

“How long, Avatar, would you have let him go if he hadn’t forced you to take my bending?” 

“I was…”

“We both know that this wasn’t for me.”

“What.” 

“You have a moral code; you felt guilty taking my father’s bending. You only freed me from Sangyul to free yourself from guilt.”

“That’s not true!” He exclaims too loudly for it to be anything other than defensive. 

“Then why did you let him go so far?” She touches her fingers to the graze beneath her eye. “Why did you wait until he expunged every bit of me that matters?”

“I-I” He sputters. “I didn’t. You’re still here, the real you.” 

She shakes her head. “Can you look at me and  _ really  _ believe that? Do you  _ really  _ believe that

**.oOo.**

A steady unease leaves his stomach queasy. Truth be told he sees anything but Azula in the broken, miserable woman before him. 

She has her bending back, she is away from Sangyul, and he is no longer tampering with her spirit energy. He doesn’t understand why her essence isn’t resurfacing in full. She stares at her palms, at her feet, at anywhere but his general direction.

With all of his might he tries to detect plumes of anger, hatred, or resentment simmering off of her but he can only feel prickles of despair and defeat. 

It begins to settle in that he may have done more damage than he had thought. The kind that she won’t just spring back up from, resilient as she had ever been. That he had done the permanent kind.

“I really believe it.” But he has waited too long to say it for it to be believable. “I really believe that you’re still here somewhere.” He tries. “You’ve only been free for a few days, you just have to readjust.” He doesn’t think that she believes it. Not even slightly. “You’re still you.” He insists again, “deep down, you’re still you.” 

She holds out her hand and ignites a burst of fire. It flickers small and orange “I’m not.” 

His heart flutters as she lowers her hand. 

His heart flutters because he has only once ever seen a firebender’s flames change so drastically. And by all means, it was because the man had changed so unrecognizably. “You’re still there.” He says again, more for himself than for her. “And I’ll prove it.”

“How?” She asks. “How can you prove anything of the sort?”

“Because we’re going to get you back in fighting shape and then we’re going to take Sangyul and his facility down.” 

**.oOo.**

Azula, had she anything left in her, could almost laugh. Even Aang, passive Avatar Aang, sounds more like her than she does. 

“Does that sound good?” He asks.

“You’re in charge, Avatar.” She stretches her arms. “You have been for a while now.”

“I want to know what you want.” 

So does she. 

She stares at her hands. She does want her fire back, more than anything she wants it back and she wants it back as she had always known it. “It sounds fine, Avatar.” 

“Are you only saying that, because you think that you have to?” 

She rubs her face in frustration and suppresses an audible groan. She hadn’t thought that she was, hadn’t considered that she might have. But now that he has mentioned it…

Oh, Agni, she wishes that he would stop asking questions. She wishes that he wouldn’t give her any reason to second guess herself. “I want  _ my  _ fire back. Does ‘getting me back in fighting shape’ include getting my fire back?”

Aang nods. 

“Then that’s what I want.” By, Agni, Sangyul better hope that she can’t manage. By all means, if she is able, she will come for him. She isn’t sure yet, just what she will do, but the man will see suffering beyond what he has done to her.

She is going to take him down.

Yes, she wants that very much. “Your plan will do just fine.” She replies. “But you’ll have to fill in the holes.” 

**.oOo.**

He doesn’t tell her, but that will be her job. When she is ready he’ll let her flesh out every minute detail, just as she always has. When she is ready…

He smiles at her. At this recovering dragon. At this broken, powerful woman. 

Though his stomach does flops he says, “we can start whenever you’re ready.” Part of him...most of him hopes that she will hesitate just a little longer, perhaps for another day or so. Just long enough to figure out how to train her. But when he extends his arm to help her up, she takes his hand. 

“I’m ready.” 


	9. Ignite

A fire rages within her, one that is much more powerful than she has managed to produce today. She wishes that, that fire would come forth. She wishes that she could stop making an absolute fool of herself in front of such a formidable foe. He smiles at her, encourages her. It is patronizing, really. 

She lets the flames die in her palms, not that there is much to extinguished at all. She finds herself a large rock to sit upon and rubs her hands over her face. What is wrong with her? She is calm, mostly. She is free. There is nothing to hack at her chi and chakra points. So why can’t she just do it? Why doesn’t it come as naturally as it always has? 

She thinks that she knows the answer but, Agni, she can’t bring herself to admit it…

“It’ll come back, Azula.” Aang promises. He makes a lot of promises and he doesn’t deliver. She lightly gnaws on her lip. That isn’t fully true; he had promised to break her free. But he has also promised to help her mind mend, promised to help her get back to herself physically, promised to fix her…

She can’t rely on him to fix her. 

She doesn’t want to. 

Agni, it would be humiliating if she did.

But her fire isn’t fixing itself and she is making little progress on fixing it. “We’ve been at this for nearly a week!” She complains. “Why haven’t I made any progress at all?” She’s an embarrassment, a perfect picture of squandered potential. 

“You’re trying too hard.” Aang answers. 

Azula goes rigid. 

“You can’t force your fire out. You have to feel it.” 

And that’s just it. She can’t, not like she used to. A connection has been severed and she doesn’t think that he can give that back. “Forget it.” She mumbles. She would rather cease firebending altogether than stare at such pitifully meek bursts. 

“Forget what? Firebending?”

She nods. “I’ll find something else…”

“Y-you...I can’t belive you!” He throws his hands up. “You were so upset about your firebending being gone that you wouldn’t even  _ move _ . I had to carry you...and now you’re just not going to use it?” 

“It’s useless, Avatar.” She scowls. “You wouldn’t got to battle with a broken sword, would you?” 

He opens his mouth. 

“No. You’d find yourself a new weapon that actually works.” She hisses. But how many weapons has she gone through. All of her sharpest are gone. Her mind and cunning, her confidence, her fire…

“So you’re quitting then?” He asks. “It isn’t like you to quit.”

She laughs, the pitch of it is startling and uncanny to even her own ears. “I’m.  _ Not _ . me.” She doesn’t know how many times she has to remind him of this. She is very sure now that Azula had died in that facility and this semi-lucid husk is what has come to fill in the vacancy. 

He crinkles his brows. “I don’t believe that.” 

She quirks a brow. 

“Sometimes you are. Sometimes I can see it really clearly, that you’re still you. Other times...right now, I can’t.” 

Neither can she. She fixes her eyes straight ahead, staring off and at nothing at all. 

“So that’s it? You’re done for today?”

She is done for...for who knows how long, really. Perhaps for good. And perhaps she should muster up the courage to prevent herself from sinking any further. If Azula has died, why shouldn’t the lingering remains of her…

**.oOo.**

Looking at her, slouched over and dull-eyed, it comes to him what is missing. He supposes her aura was a potent indicator it is almost entirely brown now where it isn’t spotted with grey. 

Confidence. 

He is almost certain that that is what it amounts to. 

That is what is missing; what the old Azula had that this Azula does not.

The fact of the matter is, she is uncertain. Riddled with conflict and turmoil to the likes of which he doesn’t think he can possibly fathom. Not without having someone like himself endlessly tinker and fiddle with his spirit for months on end.

“You can’t just give up.” 

Her body shifts as she draws in a very deep inhale and seems to deflate even further as she exhales. 

“How are you going to beat Sangyul if…”

“Maybe I don’t want to beat Sangyul.” She replies softly. “Maybe that’s what  _ you  _ want. Maybe I just want to forget about him entirely. What would it do for me anyhow?” 

He begins to speak but she lifts a hand. And suddenly he wonders if she is right, wonders if it really is he who wants to take vengeance on Sangyul. Wonders if he has lost himself just as much as she has. Really, it would serve him right. It would be the justice that Gyatso had warned him about; in doing damage to her, he has unravel himself. 

“You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Aang nearly shouts. She flinches ever so slightly.  _ He  _ needs to stop feeling sorry for himself. “You need to stand up and start practicing your bending again.”

She is tense twice over but she does stand. “You need to fix me first.” She jabs the side of her head. “You need to fix what you’ve broken.” 

“Azula, I…” He trails off. “Your spirit energy stabilizes itself. As long as I don’t touch it, it reverts…”

“Elasticity fades with age and overuse.” She pauses. “With misuse.”

He feels a twinge, likely of annoyance, possibly agitation. He is tired of taking the blame for this. Tired of receiving no credit despite doing everything he can to help. “So you want me to tamper with your spirit energy again?”

Azula swallows, he sees a little more fight leave her body. “No.”

“Then what do you want from me? Because it sure sounds like you want me to get into your head again and make some adjustments.” 

It is back, if only for a moment. “Stay away from my spirit energy, Avatar.” She scowls. 

But he sees it. 

He sees the spark and he pushes. “Ya know what, no. I’m going to do it.” Her eyes widen and he takes a step closer. “You want me to fix you, I’ll do it. I’ll touch a few threads and tug a few strings.” 

“Stay away from my spirit energy.” She repeats, lower. Cooler. 

“What are you going to do, Azula? How are you going to stop me?” He closes his eyes, he is well aware that this can go one of two ways. As the words leave his lips, he hopes to Raava that she won’t shut down, “You can’t firebend.” His stomach lurches as he lifts a flame of his own. 

He waits for a strike that never comes. Her eyes train on him and her breathing comes heavier. His tummy flops again and he lurches forward. He doesn’t expect to crash into her. He doesn’t expect to send her to the floor.  _ Come on, Azula... _ He very nearly mutters. He has her pinned. He should really let her go. But it was there. He saw it. He saw that spark. 

He presses his thumbs to her forehead. 

He can’t remember much else but he wakes up on the ground. 

His ribs sear white hot and moving is mighty awful. He touches his hand to his ribcage. The cloth is charred. A good hole burned through it. He gives a pained moan as he forces himself up right. He lumbers towards the lakeside and falls to his knees. It is a good burn, he smiles, a very good burn. 

He isn’t as good as Katara but he patches himself up enough to be okay. 

Only then does it occur to him; Azula is gone. 


	10. To Her Own Devices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's something very satisfying about getting to chapter 10 for a fic called 'Ten Sides'

Hands. 

Azula is transfixed by her hands. 

They certainly weren’t blue but those were flames. Real flames. She rubs her hands over her face, she thinks that it might be a fluke, something born purely of rage--no, desperation. She is afraid to test it, she doesn’t want to see. To find that her flames are still as weak as they were before she’d lashed out. 

She isn’t entirely sure where to go from here. Her stomach sinks, she should know where to go. At the very least she should be able to think of something. It isn’t as though she hasn’t been on her own before and left to her own devices. 

Her stomach flutters twice over; the last time she’d been left on her own…

Perhaps she has never been a strong person at all. Perhaps she has always been broken and weak. Perhaps her mind has never been her own. Azula swallows. And that’s just it isn’t it? There is no real her to return to. There is her father’s her, but there is no authentic her. She slumps against the nearest tree that she can find and nuzzles her head into it.

But she was confident. She was clever and sharp-witted. She was fierce and driven. Those have to be her own. Even if her choices hadn’t been. Even if she’d only ever followed orders. She wracks her fist against her head. Clearly she hasn’t shaken the Avatar’s influence even slightly. Her father loves her. She  _ wanted  _ to help him. She wants to help him. 

The fluttering in her tummy turns to a more pleasant tickle of relief. She has her solution, her direction. She will find her father. Find him and will make the Avatar bend to  _ her  _ will, the way it should be. The way it always should have been.

And if she can do that she will know that there is nothing left of him floating around her mind and spirit energy. 

A small smirk tugs at her lips. It will be easy. She already has his trust, she will only have to play the conflicted, frightened, pathetic part. 

Even still, in the back of her mind, she fears that she won’t have to do any acting at all.

The fire in her belly still doesn't seem to burn as hot.

**.oOo.**

He doesn’t expect to see her emerge from the forest.

But she stands there, lingers at the treeline, locks eyes with him.

“You came back?” he smiles.

She makes no move to come closer and he is almost certain that she will wander off again or slam another fist full of fire at him. Instead she walks a half circle around him and drops herself to the jungle floor. 

“I can’t be alone.” 

He isn’t entirely sure why this makes him so queasy. “I think that you could survive just fine on your own. You got me good this morning.” He lifts his shirt and shows her the angry red burn on his side.

“It was a lucky shot.” Azula mumbles. 

“You’ve always been lucky.”

“According to Zuko?” 

He flinches. 

“Have you ever thought to ask me if I thought that I was lucky?”

He rubs the back of his head. At least she has some bite back. “I guess that I haven’t? Do you think that you’re lucky.”

“That’s none of your business. Unless…”

He sighs, “I’d like to pry it out of you? I don’t want that. I only said that I was going to altere your spirit energy to get you to fight back.” Raava what has he done to her? He has taken her paranoia and given it backing. He has done exactly the opposite to her psyche than what he had promised to do. 

**.oOo.**

“In other words, you’ve found a new way of getting me to do exactly what you want me to do?” She must admit that she is rather impressed. Impressed and chilled to the core all over again. Knowing that he can play with her like that even without tapping into his special skill sets

She very nearly laughs; he is more like her than she can ever be. She clenches her fist, all the more reason to take him out. 

“No!” He bursts. “It was there! I saw it! You wanted to fight back. I don’t think that you would have if you didn’t want to. Right? Please tell me I’m right?” 

And yet he sounds almost desperate. Almost as helpless as she.

“I’m trying, Azula, I am.” He swears. “I want to make this right. But I don’t know how. Maybe this sounds weird but...I also don’t know when you’re making a decision or when I’m making it for you.”

She swallows. 

Swallows and shifts uneasily because she agrees. 

And for the first time she truly considers that his intentions aren’t wicked. She can’t imagine that it would distress him so if he was trying to break her. Truly and utterly break and destroy her. 

“I said that I was going to help you.” He frowns. “But I made it worse, I made it all worse and I added new problems.”

She agrees with this too. “Yes. You did.” She has never been a trusting person before, but now she can’t even trust herself. “You can’t help me Avatar, because your help doesn’t feel real.” Nothing feels real. Nothing since the day her father had abandoned her to chase domination. 

And maybe it isn’t real. Maybe none of this is real after all...

“Then can you let me take you to someone who can.” 

“And who do you think that might be?” 

“I don’t know. Anyone but me. Katara’s…”

“I tried to  _ kill  _ Katara. Well it was meant to coax Zuzu to take the hit but, I think that you know what I’m getting at.” 

“Zuko could help you. He wants you to get better too.” 

She shakes her head. “He wants to shape me into...into the same thing that you and Sangyul were going for. Or something like that. Don’t you understand Aang? Nobody wants me to recover.” She pauses. “They want me to come out as a brand new person.” And it is working. Oh Agni it is working, even if it isn’t the change they had in mind. 

She toys again with the idea that none of this is real. That Aang isn’t here at all; that her mind is riddled with conflict, that her own mind is pushing her to be someone else entirely. 

“I guess that I never thought about it like that.” Aang says quietly. “I want you to recover, Azula. I guess that I’ve done a pretty poor job of showing it, but I do want you to be you. I want  _ you  _ to recover, not some uncanny version of you.” 

“Uncanny?”

“To be honest, it was really unsettling to see you like  _ that _ . It might have felt real to you, when your aura was pink and red, but it felt fake to me.”

“Then why did you wait so long to get me out of there?” She grits her teeth.

“Because I was scared.” He admits. “And. And I think that there really was a part of me that thought that I could force you to be happy.” He laughs and she must say that he is rather uncanny himself. “It sounds really stupid out loud. I was so busy pulling strings in your mind that I forgot to check on my own threads.” 

She has never seen eyes so bleak. 

“Did you mean that?”

“Yes. I really was scared and I really did think that I was helping you for a while.” 

“No.” She shakes her head. “Did you mean that you wanted me to recover even if that means I’ll be the same person that you all resent.”

Aang is quiet for a long time. “Is it really recovery if the person who comes out is totally different? That’s not recovery, it’s a different kind of problem.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” 

“Because I don’t know how to.” 

“Don’t know how, or don’t want to?”

“Don’t know how.”

“You don’t know a lot of things, Avatar.”

**.oOo.**

He wishes that she were wrong. He wishes that she were wrong about a lot of things. 

It isn’t that he doesn’t know how. He knows what he wants to say, what he means. But he doesn’t know how to say it. Not without sounding conniving.

“I think that…” he trails off into a sigh. “Yes I do want you to recover even if you’re still intimidating and ruthless and all of that.” He wonders if this is what she wants to hear. “But that’s the thing. I don’t think that it will be like that.”

She tilts her head, only slightly. But it is enough to compel him to elaborate. “If you go through the process, you’re going to change Azula. But it will be...natural.” He smiles. “That’s kind of what recovery is. Some part of you changes. But you won’t be unrecognizable. That’s what I want for you.” 


	11. To Stoke The Flames

He has stirred another conflict within her. The only way to know for sure that she has her own mind is to destroy him. And yet Azula doesn’t hate him. She wants to but she can’t. Because he is genuine. Perhaps the only person who ever has been towards her. And maybe it is true. Maybe he doesn’t have any hold on her spirit anymore. Maybe it is her own doubt now. Her own doubt and the habits she has grown into. She supposes, in some manner, then that means the Avatar still very much has a hold on her. But it is no longer physical. No longer intentional. It is just one more glaring abrasion on her psyche. 

“If you need me to keep my distance, I will.” He says. “If that’s what it will take to get you to realize that you’re the one making decisions for yourself.” 

“You can stay. But when I give an answer. You don’t question it. Don’t ask me if I’m sure. Don’t suggest anything else. Just take my answer for what it is.”

“Alright. I’ll stay.” 

Azula nods. 

“So where do we go from here?” He asks. 

And this is precisely what she is unsure of. She thinks that getting  _ her  _ fire back is still the way to go. Certainly doing so would give her a much needed sense of security. And yet the very nature of her fire, down to its size, shape, and color, is wholly dependant on her personality, her spirit, her confidence. To bend her real fire requires her real self and finding her real self requires seeing that it is there in a blaze of blue. 

She isn’t sure which should come first when both things are so codependent on one another.

“Do you still want to firebend or do you have something else in mind?”

“Do we have many options?”

“We could go back to the Capital. I’m sure Zuko is itching for an explanation if Sangyul sent word to him about your...our escape.”

“I’m sure that he framed it as a solo activity.” 

“Or as an Avatar going as crazy as his patient and abducting her.” His face flushes as soon as he realizes that his joke was quite careless and lacked tact. 

She clears her throat. “Let’s just get back to firebending.” Really it beats the thought of confronting Zuko in a state that is somehow  _ more  _ pathetic than the one he’d last seen her in. And, really, it is the only solid plan that she has.

**.oOo.**

It feels unfathomably wrong. 

All of it feels unfathomably wrong. 

Azula stands before him looking anything but confident and proud. He remembers her as she had been, chin high, a smirk on her lips, and a firm stance. Before him now she is sullen; her eyes tired and her posture is passive and somewhat slouched as if the weight of everything she has been through is physically crushing her. 

“Okay, first things first, fix your stance. You can’t bend well if you’re so...loose.” More gently he adds, “you know that, Azula.” 

“Yes, I do.” She pauses. “But I haven’t started bending yet, I’ll fix it when I actually start.” 

He doesn’t call her on it, he isn’t certain that she is lying anyhow. “Why don’t you just show me one of your basic katas?”

“Which one?”

“Umm...I think that there’s one that goes sort of like this.” He drops into a tight crouch, steps forward with fire on his heel, and throws a fiery punch. He rises.

Azula shakes her head. “You aren’t supposed to add any fire to the first step. All that does is singe the grass.” She lowers into the same stance and demonstrates. “The fire kick comes after the punch, Avatar.” 

He nods. “Zuko taught me another one. I haven’t quite gotten it down but you can add a spin to the kick.” He ignites his fire once more and lowers himself nearly to the floor, for aid he adds a little air to his spin. 

Azula shakes her head. “I prefer less rolling around in the dirt.” 

“Have you ever tried that move?”

She thinks. “I suppose that I have in a way. I’ve done it but from above. I’ve also done this.” She seems to hesitate for a moment before bringing fire back to her foot and kicking an elegant half circle. Aang smiles, even if she isn’t as speedy, she seems to have more power behind her fire. 

“Can you show me the one from above?”

“I can hardly manage that half circle and you expect me to just start kicking fire at you from the air?”

He rubs the back of his head. “Well, kind of.” 

He can swear that hurt flickers across her face for a moment, “I...do you know how much that place has taken out of me?” 

“I know that you’re...rusty. But I also know that you know how to do it still. Maybe you just have to…” he tries to think of a nice way to tell her to say it, “let yourself fall and misstep a few times.” 

“I’ve never fallen. Not since I first learned these moves.” 

“That’s not true, you fell off of the drill that one time. It was a pretty steep drop too.” 

“I landed on my feet.” 

“Then do it again.” 

When she makes no move to try he sighs. “Zuko also taught me to breathe fire. Of course breathing is…”

“Crucial to firebending.” Azula interrupts. “I’ve lost strength, not intelligence.”

Aang laughs, at least that sounded like the Azula he has always known. “Then you tell me how to breath fire. Since you know so much about breathing.”

“If I didn’t know much about breathing, I would be dead.”

“You’re the professional breather so…”

“No. You are the ‘professional breather’. Isn’t that what air is for, breathing?”

“Most airbenders can’t breathe fire, Azula.” He pauses. “Anyways Zuko taught me that you have to roar like a tigerdillo and…” He throws his head back and gives a rather weak roar. The fire that works out of his mouth isn’t a spetecal by any means. “I’m still working on it.”

**.oOo.**

“The roar or the firebending aspect?” Azula folds her arms and quirks a brow. She must admit that she is faintly humored.

“You can do it better?” 

Perhaps once upon a time she could have. Perhaps if she were crazed and chained to a grate with a comet on the horizon, she could. She could probably push it through her nostrils too. “Probably not, Avatar.” But she can certainly roar in frustration, not that it would become her. 

“You said that you wanted to firebend so maybe,  _ try firebending _ .” 

“I said that I wanted to firebend, I didn’t say that it would actually happen.” She mumbles. 

Aang rapidly punches several fireballs, they are rather impressive in size. He sweeps his hand up in an arc of flame and the down again. “Am I doing it right?” 

“Your stance was a little tight at the end. You want a sturdy one for the punches but for a sweeping arc, you’ll want to be more fluid. It is also better to think of them as one motion instead of two separate stances.” 

He gives it a second try but it is still too segmented. She shakes her head, “like this.” She closes her eyes and inhales. She doesn’t open her eyes until the kata has been worked through. 

“That was incredible, if only you had your eyes open.”

“It was a basic move, avatar.”

“Then move onto the harder ones. You know that you can do the easier ones.” He pauses. “Alright well I have another basic stance.”

As it were, he has several. And he botches most of them. Perhaps that is an overstatement. He works through them decently enough but either misses a critical component or two or does the steps out of order. She takes him through them all, with a demonstration of exactly the right way to do it. Until he grows bored of the basics and brings up fire breathing again. “how do I get a powerful fire breath.” 

She sighs, “you’re rather fixated on that aren’t you?”

“It looks powerful and intimidating.”

“If you’re going to breathe fire, being powerful best not just be a look.” She pauses. “First of all, dramatically throwing your head back doesn’t really do anything. It’s better if the airway is open as fully as it can be. Inhale and breathe out, several times if you have to.” She closes her eyes again. “You can feel it…”

“The fire?”

She nods. “In your belly. If you know it well you can feel it rise and retract with every breath. So when you inhale and it flares up, focus on that. Bring your chi to it and shove it out in one exhale. Forget about roaring, it probably hinders the breathing aspect. It’s melodramatic anyways.” 

**.oOo.**

He gives it another try to the same effect as his first attempt. Only a soft puff of fire that vanishes as soon as it meets the air. 

“For an airbender, you aren’t very good at breathing.”

“My breathing isn’t the problem I can’t--”

“Feel the fire?” She asks. “Yes. I can’t either…” 

He gives a little hum. “Have you tried meditating?” 

“What?”

“I think that you’re thinking about it too much. You used to just do it. Have you tried just sitting down and focusing on feeling your fire chakra for a little while. No bending, just breathing and feeling.”

Azula’s brows crinkle. 

“I mean, think about it. When you were correcting all of my stances you didn’t put much thought into your demonstrations and, aside from not being blue, it looked like your firebending always has.” He pauses. “And that’s because you weren’t thinking about it, you just did it.”

“Avatar…”

“You asked me to train  _ you  _ when you should be training  _ me _ . You know what you’re doing. You just don’t seem to know that you know.” 

She opens her mouth. But he can’t give her the chance to say otherwise. Not when she was doing so well. 

“Firebending comes naturally to you when you aren’t telling yourself that it doesn’t.” He continues. “So sit down and just focus on your fire and your chi.”

**.oOo.**

“Is this a comfortable spot?”

They haven’t strayed too far from the clearing, just far enough that the rush of the river is no longer a distraction with its persistent burbling. It is nice enough, the spot that they have come to. There is a break in the trees so that sunlight drops a kiss on her skin and it smells rather kind. Mostly of jasmine and jungle fern. “I’d like a fire.”

“Then make one.” 

“Get me something to burn.”

Aang sighs but he wanders off and comes back with an armful of wood. She sets it ablaze and listens to the crackle of the fire for a long minute. “Now what?”

“Now you sit or lay in a comfortable position, close your eyes and get in touch with your chi and chakras.” His eyes seem to light up. “I think that I have an idea! I met this Guru and he taught me how to really get my chakras in balance. But you’re going to have to be willing to trust me and then do some introspection--”

“I didn’t ask for therapy!” She snaps. 

He lifts his hands. “Okay, we’ll skip the introspection for now.” She makes a mental note of ‘for now’. “Right now we can just do some simple meditation. Are you comfy.”

“As comfortable as a jungle floor can be.”

“Great. So close your eyes.” He waits for her to do so. “And just breathe. Don’t even think about your fire or your chipoints yet. Just breathe.” 

It is strange to focus entirely on her breathing and she finds herself listening more to the crackle of the fire than to her own inhales. 

“You’re still very tense, can I uh…” he clears his throat. “Can I give you a little massage?” His face better be burning hotter than hers. “Just on the shoulders.”

She clears her own throat, “fine, Avatar.” He seems to hover his hands over her shoulders before actually bringing them down. His touch is rather nice, she supposes, he works to rub the knots out of her shoulders and neck. She knew that her muscles were taut, but not  _ that  _ strained. He withdraws after some time, “better?”

Azula nods.

“Okay then, just breath again.” He lets several minutes go by before quietly saying, “now try to feel your inner fire rising with your inhales, like you told me to do. If it helps, listen to the physical fire.”

“That’s what it is there for.” 

He laughs, “I guess that, that makes sense. Good thinking.” 

“Naturally.” 

She cracks an eye open and catches his goofy grin. She almost asks him why he is so thrilled when he says, “hey, no peeking.” And it comes to her that she has finally spoken well of herself...and quite boldly.

She feels his hands on her shoulders again. She thinks to push him away but it is rather comforting. 

Very comforting, whether she wants to admit it or not. Briefly she basks in the fleeing stiffness.

And then she lets the world around her slip away. Slip until there is nothing but a crackling and snapping, a heat on her skin, and a steady and slow inhale and exhale. And she does, she does feel it. As sure as she feels the external fire, she feels her own. It swells in her belly with each inhale. Swells with a life, an itching to escape. 

She inhales again and it breathes too. She exhales and lets it blaze along and over her chipoints. 

She inhales and exhales until even the external fire fades out. And there is only her. She and her fire--small but growing. Small but searingly bright. 


	12. Visions Of Disjoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not sure how I feel about this chapter tbh. I think that I’ve reached a point where I actually don’t know what to do with this fic. Like I have several scenes in mind but I’m not sure how to get there without a bunch of chapters about aimless wandering, I feel like it would get a bit redundant so apologies if the time skip is jarring or lackluster. I usually don’t struggle with show don’t tell but idk; feel free to offer opinions on whether or not the pacing is weird. 
> 
> Usually when I write, the story kind of just writes itself and 9/10 times it flows naturally. I'm at a point with this one where that's just not happening. Basically I feel like the flow is off somehow.

She stares for the longest time, he isn’t sure why she is so surprised. But her face, a rather priceless expression upon it, is the absolute picture of delighted shock. It certainly isn’t blue but her fire is alive. Alive and glowing around her hands and feet as she lands one final kata. Or so he thinks. She takes a deep inhale, deeper than the last few and she takes a stance. A much tighter one. She closes her eyes and holds her hands level with her belly button. He knows what she is going to do. Her stomach rises and falls with every breath and he is certain that she is focusing on each one. On that steady rise and fall of her chest and stomach. And then she makes her move; the gestures are wide and sweeping and at first there are only a few weak sparks. She pushes forward in spite of it.

And then it comes, a line of lightning. Two lines of them, one for each hand. She brings them together and thrusts them forward. 

He is certain that she hadn’t anticipated success; she jerks at the sudden roll of thunder. At the cracking of wood. She opens her eyes and sees it as well as he; a rather large and splintered tree branch. Both severed ends still smolder hotly. A jagged black line snakes up and down the bark. 

He thinks that she might be crying, at least a little. 

He almost hugs her but thinks better of it. 

“See, all you had to do was stop thinking about it so much. Zuko said that you were a natural when you first started. You’re a natural with resuming too.” 

She holds her hands in front of her face and flexes them, steam still rolls off of her palms. “I’m still going to need to get back in shape.” Her voice isn’t as laced with emotion as he thought that it would be. 

“You seem fine to me.” 

“I’m drained, Avatar.” She sighs. And perhaps that is it, she is too fatigued to be overly thrilled. “This used to be effortless but I’m sore and…” He takes notice of the slightest panting. “I’m not used to moving so much.” 

“I’m sure that you’ll catch up quickly, we’ve got a lot of hiking to do and we can keep up a bending routine on the way…” he cuts himself off. “Sorry I forgot to ask if that was okay with you.”

“It’s a fine plan. I used to practice bending first thing when I woke up. I’d like to resume that.” 

He has to agree that it would probably be good for her to get back into at least a few old and familiar routines. He watches her make her way to their campfire, lay down, and curl herself up. He’ll let her rest for a while while he extinguishes the flames. He supposes that they still have a decent amount of daylight. But really, what is the rush? Sangyul and his team have likely relocated the minute they resigned to that they wouldn’t be finding he and Azula anytime soon. As far as he is concerned, the two of them have all the time in the world to get her comfortable and confident again. 

**.oOo.**

Sometimes, he lays closer to her. When her nightmares are particularly awful--so much so that they bleed into her waking moments--when he thinks that she is still asleep or not entirely lucid. He keeps his distance although he is close enough for it to mean something. 

_ Her hand is cupped over his. She strokes the back of his hand with her thumb and gives a soft purr.  _

_ “Azula.”  _

_ Her name as it rolls off of his tongue...it’s like windchimes in a gust.  _

_ She lifts his hand and rubs it against her cheek. The boy looks over his shoulder. Over his shoulder at the doctor. She supposes that the man is quite the looker himself when he isn’t trying to make a case study of her.  _

_ “Avatar.” She says there is a certain huskiness to her voice, some low reverberation that brings color to his cheeks. All the better, the boy is adorable when he is flustered.  _

And in waking, she is flustered. Beyond flustered, really. She is humiliated, disgusted. And thankful that he had done everything he could to snub her advances. On those nights she wanders to the other end of the clearing and sleeps there. On those mornings to follow, he asks her what he did wrong. 

On those mornings she never answers. 

He lets her firebend alone. 

She comes back at the end of those days, worn far past her limits. Bone tired and ready to collapse. So she works herself harder, until she does collapse and he has to drag her limp body back to the campsite. 

She doesn’t dream when she is that exhausted...at the very least, she doesn’t remember what she has dreamed. What miserably memory chooses to surface. 

_ She stands in front of the mirror and she isn’t sure if she is looking at herself. Something is off. She can’t place it but there is something. She narrows her eyes and tries to scrutinize herself in as much detail as she possibly can. And yet she isn’t sure what is different. She touches her face, runs her fingers through her hair, traces the frame of her body; she feels the same.  _

_ But something is wrong.  _

_ She knows that something is wrong.  _

_ She looks like her, but she knows that she is not her.  _

_ Another face appears in the mirror, it comes to cover her own. It bears resemblance to her. The sort of resemblance only family can have. And when she touches her cheek, she touches her father’s cheek.  _

_ When her aura fans out around her it is… _

_ Whose aura is this?  _

_ It chills her.  _

_ This foreign aura chills her. It has a physical weight as it coils itself around her wrist. She looks back up into the mirror and now she can see the differences. The woman who looks back is terrified. Small. Her face is hollow, cheeks sunken, skin pale… _

_ And she seems to grow frailer and frailer as the frigid, bleak aura grows larger, thicker. A hand closes around her wrist. She tries to burn it away. But her fire isn’t quite searing enough, it clings tightly… _

_ “Azula!” Her father...no it is Sangyul… _

_ It is both.  _

_ “What are you doing?”  _

_ Sangyul’s aura wraps itself around her fire.  _

_ “No.” She whispers. “No! Father don’t let him do this!” _

_ “You let him do this.” Her father sneers. “This is your fault. It’s your fault because you’re weak.” _

_ Her fire is dimming. She strains herself, trying to flare it back up. It won’t rise, her body is too meek. Her mind is too fragmented. Her vision distorts and blurs and she doesn’t remember anymore. She doesn’t remember what’s happening, what she is doing. But she is surrounded; there are twelve faces and ten of them are her own.  _

_ Her vision blurs again and she is sitting on a bed with the Avatar. She is leaning in for a kiss. As he pulls his head back her world spins again. Spins and shifts and the twelve figures are closer.  _

_ “Go on, Azula. Do it.” Her father says, his voice wrapping with Sangyul’s. “You want this.”  _

_ “It’s alright.” Ten voices assure her.  _

_ “I don’t want to do this.” She mumbles.  _

_ “Don’t you?” Sangyul asks. “I think that you do.”  _

_ They do the shoving but it is her own hand that stains red. She feels a burning under her eye and a white hot flare in her belly. Her breathing is erratic as it pours out of her; her fire, her aura, her essence.  _

_ The ten figures close in around her.  _

_ They all look like her.  _

_ But they are all wrong; one of them wears a smile that is much too joyful, one of them has a face permanently twisted and lined with rage, and another is somehow duller, muted. There is another who wears her robes several sizes too tight and several inches too low cut and another still who never looks up… _

_ She doesn’t observe them all.  _

_ She doesn’t get the chance because they all reach out and consume her before she can. What they leave of her is scattered. Unsalvageable.  _

_ “Disappointment.” Ozai remarks distantly. _

_ “That isn’t quite what I had in mind.” Sangyul mutters. _

_ She’s dying, can’t they see that she’s... _

She knows that he has heard her but he has heard her whimpering softly to herself but he has the decency not to ask. The sun hasn’t yet risen. Even she doesn’t fancy being up so obscenely early, but she cares even less to slip back into that nightmare. She hadn’t even thought it possible to feel more fragmented than she does in waking. 

She wanders towards the singed and splintered tree. She catches Aang observing her, she pretends not too. A part of her--the part that yearns for release--hopes that he will approach her. He keeps his distance, he pretends like he is sleeping. 

She throws her first fireball. Admittedly, it lifts her mood some. Despite the incessant nightmares, she is feeling significantly less helpless. Her blasts are more on par with what she is used to, her coordination is better. Daily hikes with Aang have brought at least some definition back to her figure. 

It is quite reassuring. 

And yet she feels as though there is still something missing. 

Some key part of her. 

She takes a deep breath and shakes the thoughts away. If this goes right then she will find herself with a clearer mind and the Avatar will no longer have to pretend to be asleep. She closes her eyes and draws upon her inner flame. Feels the sparks running through her veins. 

The electricity runs from her core to her chest, she pulls it down her arms and to her fingertips. It hums pleasantly around her chipoints. And her disjointed mind is quiet again. 

She hears Aang yelp and has herself a small chuckle. 

**.oOo.**

Azula holds herself higher, her eyes are much clearer. Every now and again they betray confusion and confliction. He isn’t certain exactly what it is born from but he has his suspicions. 

He is almost certain that her conflict is at least connected to him. To what he represents. The truth is, he thinks, that she isn’t ready for change. Not yet, not under such unconventional circumstances. 

“I don’t hate you, Avatar.” She mentions on occasion. “I think that I should. But I don't. I can’t.” 

“Do you want to?” He had asked on one of those occasions. 

He remembers the way that her brows furrowed. The slight parting of her lips. “I think that I should want to.”

For a change, she walks ahead of him. He doesn’t know where she is leading him. He isn’t sure that she knows either. He thinks that she is walking to give herself something to do. “Where are we going, Azula?”

“Sometimes I just want to walk, Avatar. We’ve been in the same place for weeks. It’s stagnant. I need to at least feel like I’m making progress.” 

He laughs, “you are! I think that that’s obvious. Before you could barely light a candle, now you’re blasting holes through trees.” 

Azula shrugs. 

“You can’t run away from your past, Azula.”

“Maybe I’m trying to walk back to it.” 


	13. Flecks Of Orange

He brings her to a halt. “Then let’s do it.”

“Do what?” 

“Walk back to the past.”

She tenses, she thinks that she already knows what is coming. “Avatar, I don’t want to try your silly pacifist monk, guru method.” 

“First of all, it’s not silly, it’s a very complex and deeply spiritual process that involves a lot of inward thinking, self-reflection and bravery.” He ignores her stifled laugh and continues, “Second of all that’s not what I was going to suggest. Third of all, I’m glad that you’re feeling better.” 

“Who says that I’m feeling better?” 

“You’re laughing and you don’t look like a kicked rabaroo anymore.” 

A small pout betrays her.

“Okay, well you sort of do right now but…” his eyes widen. “Hey! You’re trying to distract me.” 

“I am not.”

“Azula, we don’t have to do any ‘silly pacifist monk’ stuff. I just want you to talk to me. No spirit vines, no altered emotions. I want to hear the real you talk about your past.” 

She is certain that his mind is still stuck on a single comment. On two simple words. “What of it?”

“When was the last time you were happy?” He asks. “Were you ever happy?” 

The question is as perplexing and heavy as it had been the first time he’d posed it and this time she doesn’t have a shot of manufactured serenity to help her through it. She finds herself a tree to prop herself up against. “Why are you so desperate to know?”

**.oOo.**

Aang sighs to himself. Wherever he thinks that he is making ground with her, she goes and proves otherwise. He supposes that he has brought this level of guardedness upon himself. Even so, he wishes that she would throw him some sort of a chance.

“Because I have to start somewhere with you and I don’t know where to…”

He catches her leaning more heavily against the tree. “Why do you want to get into my head so badly?”

“I don’t want to get into your head, I did enough of that. I told you that I want to help you.”

“Why?” She asks. “You haven’t given me a why. What is your motive?”

“I have no--”

“Everyone has a motive, Avatar? Sangyul certainly had one. So what’s yours?”

“I just...I like helping people. That’s what I do. It’s what I’m supposed to do.” He tries not to dwell on it so much. Tries not to dwell upon it at all but her spirit energy is so potantly distraught. So laced with hurt and so tangled with mistrust. 

“So I’m a project.”

“You’re a person.” He tries. “You have feelings.”

“And you’ve learned to navigate them very well.”

He grits his teeth. “Will you stop bringing that up! I could be reminding you of that time when you shot me with lightning. When you  _ killed  _ me!”

“I did what I had to do.” She mutters. “And I’d do it again.” She crosses her arms and averts her gaze. He wishes that it didn’t remind him so much of that more timid version of her. He rubs his face, reminding himself that, that version of her had always been there. Had always been a part of her even if he hadn’t gotten to see it.

“Maybe you would. But would you  _ want  _ to?” He asks. “We all had to do things during the war, Azula.” 

The princess heaves herself away from the tree and strides away from him with no direction but a sense of purpose. He scrambles after her. “Azula! We’re not done talking!”

Apparently she is. 

He clenches his fists.He shouldn’t have brought up the lightning thing. 

“I got you out of there! I didn’t have to.” But he did. He absolutely did have to get her away from that facility.”

Her determined strides come to a very abrupt halt. His stomach sinks. 

“So that’s it. I’m in your debt now? It must be empowering to have a princess in your debt.” She comments. “I suppose I should have expected you to swap one means of control for another. That’s what I would have done.” 

“I didn’t bring that up to blackmail you, I was hoping that you’d realize that you can trust me.” And yet he’d picked the most patronizing phrasing. He knows that she is aware of this. “I also said it because I’m frustrated.”

“If I frustrate you then maybe you should leave me to my own devices.” 

“I don’t want to do that.” He shakes his head. “You frustrated me because you won’t let me help you. Sometimes it seems like you want my help and then you just...close up.” 

Azula grits her teeth and works a muscle in her jaw. 

“You haven’t decided if you want my help, have you?” He thinks of telling her to come find him when she decides. He almost does. But, Raava, if that wouldn’t stir up an impulse decision. He wishes that he didn’t have to be so delicate with her. 

**.oOo.**

Azula’s stomach is tying itself in knots. Why can’t she just decide what she wants? She thinks that they have damaged her beyond repair. Not that she hadn’t been heavily guarded prior to their invasion. 

The incessant itch for release is still ever present and this time she can’t seem to push it back to the inner recesses of her mind. Agni, she thought that it would go away if she didn’t poke or prod at it. 

But the truth is, she wants to talk. 

She  _ needs  _ to talk. 

She can’t talk. 

Not while she is in such a prone state. 

“If you do want my help I promise that it won’t be like any of the institutions. I’ll listen to you and you can say as much or as little as you want.”

“What did you do in the war?” She asks. “That you didn’t want to do?”

She thinks that she sees relief in his eyes. “I did a lot of things. In the Avatar state--I can’t quite be sure--but I think that I killed people. I’m almost sure that I did because Katara gets really quiet when I ask.” He pauses. “So I guess that I have no right to call you out on killing me.”

Azula shifts awkwardly. “At least some resentment is due.” 

“I could have killed you and Zuko. I didn’t have control over the Avatar state.”

“You would have done what you had to do.” She shrugs. 

“I still don’t feel good about it.” 

“Yeah…” 

“You don’t have to be proud of everything you did either.”

She hesitates. “But I am.” And she will stick firm--as firmly as she possibly can--to that. “I was fighting for my Nation.”  _ And for her father.  _ “And I am perfectly okay with that. If we would have won the war I would have been…”

“The hero and I would have been the bad guy?” 

She nods. “Correct.” 

“I guess that’s the weird thing about war. Everyone thinks that they’re doing the heroic thing but it usually turns out that we’re all the bad guys.” He pauses. “Or maybe most of us are good guys and one or two villains called the shots.” 

“Indulge me, Avatar. What good do you think I’ve done?” When he says nothing she asks. “What makes you think that I’m not one of the two villains?”

“Well...uh…” He nervously rubs the back of his head. “Zuko mentioned that you both really wanted to be in your father’s good graces. I don’t exactly have any affection for your dad but he’s still your dad.”

“What’s your point?” She hisses. 

“My point is that you loved him, right?”

Azula bites the inside of her lip. She nods, though it is much more complicated than that. 

“And love is a good thing.” He smiles softly. “I think that you also loved your nation, right?”

“Very much.” She replies. “We may have lost but we’re still the greatest nation.” She holds her fist to her chest and her chin high.

He laughs. 

“Why do you laugh when I am not being funny but refuse to laugh when I make a joke?” 

It takes him a moment but he seems to understand, “I was really tired when you mimicked Zuko. I’m laughing at this because, I don’t know, I think that it’s kind of...endearing that you’re so passionate about your culture.” He adds, “that’s not a bad thing either.”

“Your point?”

“That you’re not a bad person. I just think that you’ve been channeling your energy and passion into the wrong thing.” He pauses. “Or, actually, that you’ve been putting you passion into some good things but using approaching it the wrong way.”

_ Misguided.  _

She cringes at the unspoken truth.

“Whatever the reasoning, I can’t fix it.” 

“Yes you can.” He reaches out and touches her bicep. She isn’t sure why, but she lets him. There is something reassuring in the gesture. Something comforting. Her tummy tickles. “There’s still a lot left to do to bridge the nations together. You can be a part of that. This time you can help spread Fire Nation culture, but for real.” 

“For real…”

“I think that we both know that your father wasn’t trying to spread the Fire Nation’s glory. He was trying to expand his power.” 

She supposes that he wouldn’t have left her behind if he didn’t think that she would get in the way of it. She and her cracking psyche and her weakness and…

“I know that you don’t like talking about your father so we can try a new subject.”

“That would be ideal.”

“You’re not evil, Azula. That’s what you need to know.” He pauses. “And for the record, I don’t think that you’re unlovable either.” 

She crinkles her brows. “You don’t?”

“I don’t.” 

Her stomach flops again.

“I think that, once you start opening up, people will like you a lot. I have a feeling that there’s more to you than war tactics and politics.” 

She isn’t sure that she agrees. “I haven’t exactly had time to explore hobbies outside of that.” 

“Great, then there are a lot of opportunities for you to try new things. Do you know how memorable first times are?”

“I assure you that seeing my first hallucination was an unforgettable moment.” 

“And so was going to that beach party with Zuko. Yeah, he told me all about that.” Aang chuckles. “He mentioned that it was the first time in a long time that you guys bonded.” 

Azula almost smiles. 

“What I’m trying to say is that you have a chance. I just really hope that you’ll take it.” 

“I can try.” But Agni is it such a fight and she hasn’t won many of those in a while. 

“You tend to succeed at things you try.” He points out. 

“I used to, yes.” 

“You still do!” He insists. “Look how quickly you’re getting back to firebending. Do you know how long that usually takes people?” 

“I suppose that I am much better than most people at firebending.” Once upon a time, she’d wager that she was better than everyone. “It’s coming along quicker than I expected.” She holds out her hand and gazes at that admirably large orange flame. “I miss having blue fire.”

“You won’t for long.” Aang promises. “Once you start feeling like yourself again.” 

And how lovely would that be. To truly feel as empowered and bold as she had before. She thinks that, for the first time in so long, she has at least some semblance of control. That she has at least a small sense of herself. Of the old her.

“Can you answer one more question?”

“Depends. What is it?”

“Was that so bad, talking about what’s bothering you?”

“It was quite painful, yes.” She replies. Painful and humiliating. She feels ridiculous, really. Ridiculous but...lighter. She thinks that the itch has finally eased. “We will do this again.” 

**.oOo.**

Aang bites back a chuckle. He hadn’t anticipated her talking so much. But he supposes that once the floodgates are open, they are hard to shut. Even still, he thinks that he has only scratched the surface. Though it is a start. A real start. And a start born of free will. 

Her aura has brightened some. Enough for it to be of note. Splashes of red penetrate the greys and flecks of orange begin to drive out the browns. 

“So where do we go now?” He asks.

“I think that I should go home.” She lazily and absently coils what’s left of her bangs around her finger. “We ought to let Zuzu know that I haven’t killed you. And besides, it will be much easier to find and eliminate Sangyul if I have more resources to expend.”

“Alright we’ll go to the palace.” His heart gives a hopeful little flutter. She is starting to sound like herself again. 


	14. Crab Legs

“Where’s the bison anyways?” Azula asks. 

“I took a boat to get here.” Aang replies. 

“Well that’s inconvenient.” 

“I figured that I’d be mostly staying on facility grounds so there was no point in bringing  _ Appa _ .” 

“In that case, I suppose that it would be impractical to bring the...Appa along.”

“You do have enough coin to pay for a ship ride back to the Capital, yes?”

“Umm, well, I have something better.”

Azula sighs, “Let me guess, ‘I’m the Avatar so you will let me board this vessel.’”

“First of all, don’t tell me that you haven’t used the princess card. Second of all, I would have said something like, ‘I’m the Avatar so can I please ride on this ship?’” 

“You’re too soft.” She mumbles. 

At last they reach the end of the jungle. It gives way to a small fishing village that smells of freshly cooked fish and spices, saffron, nutmeg, and ginger mostly. The atmosphere is lively with traditional song, the beating of a drum and clanking of jewelry as a performer dances. It is rich with Fire Nation culture, he wishes that he could spend some more time here but he assumes that Azula is growing impatient, even if she carefully concealed it away. 

“He could have just sent me here or something.” Azula grumbles. “It would have done me better.”

At this he chances asking, “can we stop to get some real food?”

“I thought that you didn’t have any coin.”

“Watch this!” He grins. He sprints off to the nearest eatery, looks over his shoulder to make sure that the princess is still watching, and says to the man at the counter, “I’ll show you some neat airbending tricks for a meal!”

“If I wanted a street performance I would go over there.” He points at the dancer and her entourage. “She’s more attractive.” 

Azula wanders up behind. “How about a meal for your princess.” She lazily drawls. 

“Sure.” He replies. “If she were here.” 

Aang is surprised that she doesn’t visibly recoil. She doesn’t even flinch. Though he imagines that she is, inwardly. He can’t imagine that this has done her shaken confidence any favors. 

She shrugs, “if you say so. I’ll be sure to send someone to teach you some respect once I get back to the palace.”

“Azula!” He exclaims, though the man’s face is quite priceless. “You can’t just punish people for...for not believing you.” 

“I can.” She replies. “I am the princess.” 

“At least you know that this man doesn’t stand for imposters, right?” He tries. Though her bluntness is reassuring. Her manner of speech leaves him feeling optimistic about her recovering from her time with Sangyul so he won’t hassle her too much for it.

Azula shrugs, “I suppose. But that doesn’t get me my smoked crab legs.” 

“Is that all you want?” The man asks. 

She nods. “Season it heavily and add a touch of pepper.” 

“And I’ll have…” Aang starts

“What she’s having.” The man fills in. “I don’t give out free meals to just anyone.” 

“Not even the Avatar.”

“Do you know how many Avatars I see? And they all just so happen to be with tourist groups.” He pauses. “Though this is the first time I’ve seen an Avatar and a Princess Azula together. Think of this dish as a reward for creativity.” He hands a platter of crab legs to Azula. 

“It is the truth.” She assures him.

“Thank you.” Aang smiles and tugs her away before she can argue. He leads her to the nearest table and sits down.

“I am Azula.” She frowns. “I...am I not acting like it?” 

Aang laughs, “trust me, I’ve never heard you sound more like you.”

“Then why would he question me?”

“Probably because he never expected Princess Azula to show up in such a small town. Your haircut probably doesn’t help.” 

Azula combs her fingers through her hair.

“Trust me, no one ever believes me when I say that I’m the Avatar. How do you think that we managed to stay on Ember Island without getting caught?”

She seems to stare off for a moment before picking out a crab leg. 

“Just so you know, I agree.” He says upon sitting down.

“With what?”

“That it would have done you much better to send you to a village like this. There’s fresh air and lively people. You could have gotten to know a few people, make some friends. It could have been relaxing and you could have learned how to cook and...” He trails off. “But would you really have stayed if he did?”

“No.” She shrugs. “But he could have had you act as a monitor.”

“And you would have been okay with that?”

“Absolutely not.” She snaps off part of a cooked crab leg and pops it into her mouth. 

He chuckles. “I didn't think so.”

“It still would have been better than Sangyul.” 

“Hey, wanna go watch the street performer?” 

“We have to focus.”

“We’ve been focusing and working hard since we broke out.” Aang pouts. “I think that we could both use a break. I can anyways.”

**.oOo.**

Just as he was unable to charm his way into a free meal, Aang had no luck procuring them a ship ride home. He did, however, swipe some parchment and paint. He’d left it to her to steal a messenger hawk. She watches him scrawl out a request to Zuko to have a ship or some coins to buy one sent to them. 

She doesn’t enjoy having to sit still and wait. Though she supposes that it is a necessary inconvenience. A ship sent from the palace would be much more comfortable than some rickety vessel from a small port town.

She questions Aang’s decision to spend the night on the beach as lays back and listens to the waves crash against the sand. Sand that she has taken special care not to step upon, the last thing she needs is sand in her hair and clinging to her skin to add to the discomforts she already has. 

Granted most of the discomforts come from within.

He has already assured her that it has nothing to do with her own demenor and yet she can’t put it out of her mind the man’s blatant dismissal of her royal status. No one has questioned her identity, no one that she hadn’t wanted to. But this man refused to believe that the woman before him could possibly be his princess. And it must be something that she is missing. Something that she lacks that she hadn’t before. 

Maybe she has come across as too timid. Maybe she simply hadn’t been as imposing as she used to be…

And she couldn’t even flash her fire to put him in his place.

The waves give a particularly loud crash and she rubs her hands over her face. But the Avatar had assured her that she has sounded more like herself than she has in a very long time. Yet, since when did she have to depend on his opinion to form her own. Her nerves leave her queasy. 

She wishes that, that was the only thing that has left her rattled.

There is something else. Something that leaves her disoriented with dread. Something that comes to the surface each time Aang does something either bold or comforting. It is only a little thing, an itch in her mind. A feeling that, even after so much time, the Avatar is still there in her mind. Somehow still lingering. Why else would Ai-Emi still be flitting about in her mind, gently imploring her to pursue the Avatar? 

It isn’t her. 

It can’t be. 

Azula can’t be smitten with anyone, much less the Avatar.

And yet there is something enticing about the boy’s dark, do-what-needs-doing side, about his bold readiness to confront and argue with her. About his willingness to give her the harsh push that she had needed to find herself. That side of him, that sinister, brazen side of him is rather admirable. Appealing. That surprising cunningness that she hadn’t expected of him…

She shakes her head. She she doesn’t understand why she can’t be rid of those soft shades of pink that he has put into her spirit energy.

It is no wonder the man hadn’t recognized her. She still can’t recognize parts of herself. She still hasn’t reclaimed herself in full.

She isn’t sure if it is more or less comforting to think that her mind is still touched over thinking that these feelings might be wholly and indisputably her own--the unintended by product of opening herself up to someone who truly seems to care for her. 

She curls herself up beneath a palm tree and hugs her knees to her chest. Somehow she thinks that her feelings are indeed all her own. She wishes that she could know. She wishes that they hadn’t shaken her sense of self so terribly.


	15. The Base Of Fear

She toys with the idea, turning it over and over in her mind. She doesn’t like it but she thinks that it may well be the only way. Azula lays back and listens to the waves as they beat against the side of the boat. The constant rock and sway of the vessel won’t make for an easy execution…

She clasps her hands atop her belly and stares up at the ceiling. If she breathes deeply enough, she can feel the energy of her fire chakra stirring beneath her touch. At the very least, she can take comfort in that. She closes her eyes, she supposes that she can use it to achieve her end goal. She drums her fingers.

“Hello, Azula.” 

She cracks an eye open. “Avatar.” She sits up. “I was just about to send for you.” Of course, on this loathsome ship she would have to send herself. 

“Is everything alright.”

“Everything is quite deplorable. This cabin is too small, it’s too dim, it smells rank…”

“You do realize that there’s a deck, right?”

Azula shrugs, “that’s not what I was going to fetch you for.” 

“Okay then, what do you want?”

She hesitates momentarily and clears her throat. “I have decided that we will try your silly pacifist monk method.” 

Aang blinks. “You want to balance your chakras?”

She nods. 

“You do realize that you’re going to have to trust me and really open yourself up, right?”

“Don’t patronize me, Avatar.”

He lifts his hands, “I was just letting you know what you’re asking for.”

“I know what I’m asking for.” Perhaps she speaks with too much force, but she needs to, if only to remind herself of her own agency. She closes her eyes and grits her teeth. She has agency and she has come to this decision on her own. It is  _ her  _ choice. Hers alone.

“Okay.” Aang smiles. “Try to get comfortable. And just so you know, once we start the process you  _ need  _ to follow through. I cut myself off from the Avatar state when I left it unfinished.”

Azula’s stomach flutters. “But you have gone into the Avatar state since?” 

Aang nods, “because your father just so happened to throw me into a rock, I struck right on my scar.” 

Her stomach flutters a second time. 

“Do you still want…”

“We talked about this, Avatar. Don’t question me. I want to unblock my chakras.” But she isn’t sure that she wants to delve into those deeper, buried aspects of herself. Not in front of him...not in front of anyone really, but especially not in front of the Avatar. 

**.oOo.**

He can see the reluctance and conflict in her eyes, it radiates off of her. Impulsively, he takes her hand. “You’ll do fine, I think that this could really help you. Not just with your bending. It was...scary and hard but I got to know myself a lot better.”

She seems to focus more on his hand than his words so he withdraws his touch and repeats himself. “That’s the kind of healing you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

Azula nods. “It is, yes.” She lifts the hand that he had gripped and clutches it in her own. 

“Okay, just make yourself comfortable. It’s best to sit criss-crossed but these wooden planks aren’t exactly relaxing so if you want to lay down on the bed you can. Whatever helps you feel the flow of your chakra the best.” 

He watches her crawl onto the bed and light a few candles. She lowers her head to the pillow and inhales deeply. His own tummy flutters. If this goes wrong…

If it goes wrong he isn’t exactly sure what will become of her. 

She holds her hands over her fire chakra. He isn’t particularly surprised, she seems to do that alot. Likely she takes comfort in physically feeling that it is there and thriving, even if not as intensely as she’d like. 

“Alright, close your eyes.” He waits for her to listen before saying, “let me know when you’re ready.”

She lays for a few moments.

**.oOo.**

She isn’t quite ready at all but she has been out of touch for much too long. It is time to let go of fear and weakness. She needs this, she needs to be herself. Fully and genuinely herself. 

“Go on, Avatar.” 

He nods. “The first chakra is the earth chakra, found at the base of the spine. It deals with survival.” 

She knows plenty about that. 

“And it is blocked by fear.” 

She tenses. “Do we have to start there?” She mutters. She can’t imagine a worse thing to start with. 

“We have to go in order, yeah.” 

She swallows and lays back down. She can see it on his face that he itches to ask her if she is sure that she wants to proceed. “What are you afraid of?” He asks instead. “You don’t have to say it allowed, but you can if that helps. Think of the things you are afraid of and then clear your mind of them.” 

“That’s it?” Just clear my mind?”

He nods, “you can face them later if you want, for now just recognize them and put them aside.” He smiles. 

She closes her eyes again. Her tummy is already tight with dread and she hasn’t even begun conjuring the images. Images of failure, of being disheveled and bound to a grate. Images of her father looming over her and berating her for it and a slew of other things. Of her mother, her father, Zuko Mai, and TyLee...everyone leaving her--they always do. Flickers of being bound up with spirit vines draped over her head, flashes of Sanyul hovering over her, observing. Blood on her fingers as she brings them away from her cheek, a small blade in her shaking hand. 

She tries to clear them but they don’t stop. There is a steady onslaught of them, some that don’t have visuals at all. Some that she doesn’t quite grasp. They are feelings; softness, kindness, and love. And she sees Aang, not particularly in the same way that she sees Ozai or Sangyul. Not even Aang himself, she realizes, but a swirl of pinks and reds and whites that surrounds him, that comes from her. 

She thinks that her lower lip is quivering. 

She thought that she was stronger than this. 

Perhaps she had been. 

And another image breaks through; it is a version of her, pathetic and sobbing. She thinks that it is becoming the truth. She doesn’t want it to be the truth. 

She feels his hand on hers again, “you have to clear these thoughts, Azula.” She finds herself gripping his hand tighter. She isn’t sure that she can do this, but she has to. She has to or…

She thinks again of that sobbing version of herself. She thinks of herself in general. 

Aang strokes the back of her hand.

She has to clear them out. She takes another breath and exhales, purging the images with her breath. It takes several breaths for her mind to finally grow quiet again. And when it does, Agni, when it does there is a lightness. A notable lack of tension. Azula’s grip on Aang’s hand loosens. 

**.oOo.**

The boy is grinding. “One down, six left.”

“It worked?” She asks. Her breathing is still somewhat rugged. 

“It did, I can tell.” He confirms. “Was that so bad?”

“It was unbearable.” 

Her voice is shaky so he drops his jesting. He wishes that he could promise her that it gets easier. “You seem like you’re able to get through a lot of things that people find unbearable. This time it’ll be worth it. I promise.”

“We don’t have to continue right away, you can take a few minutes.” 

She nods. He has a feeling that she is more than a little uncomfortable. He doesn’t think that she has allowed herself to be this vulnerable since their breakout. At least this time she has volunteered for this. “Guru Pathik made me drink this gross onion and banana juice.” He notes. 

She crinkles her nose. “You didn’t mention that this was a method of torture.”

Aang laughs. “You ready to move forward?”

“I am.” 


	16. Facing Fire

“The next chakra is the water chakra.”

“Wonderful, I just love waterbending.” Azula grumbles. 

“I think that you’d make a good waterbender, it’s all graceful and agile.” He notes. “I think that it would come naturally to you. When Pathik and I were doing this he told me that all of the elements were connected. They’re four parts of one whole and that’s why, to balance your chakras, you need to work with all four elements.” 

“I suppose that, that makes sense.” Azula agrees. She takes a deep breath. “So what mental anguish are you going to inflict upon me next.”

“Guilt.”

Azula inhales sharply, she supposes that he has plenty of ammo. 

“The water chakra deals with pleasure and is blocked by guilt. I think that you can guess where this one is located.” 

Azula nods, “I am plenty aware, yes. Let’s just get this guilt tripping over with.”

Aang shakes his head. “This isn’t something I goad you into feeling. You tell me...or tell yourself what you blame yourself for and what you regret doing.” 

There are a great many things that come to mind, things that she would rather not think of at all. Things that she hadn’t realized that she felt remorse for until her mind began to wander. And, Agni do they extend far back. So many little things; shoving TyLee over as children, a collection of petty antics done for the sake of making her mother hate her more, most everything surrounding Zuko. Albeit, it was much better to have beat Zuko down than to have let father beat her down. And yet all of these things have come back for her. She thinks of the little things that had led up to Mai and TyLee stabbing her in the back. All of the profound things, the games and manipulatives.

It hurts. She doesn’t want them to hate her and yet she can’t see it anyother way. 

She sees the scar on Aang’s back, the one that matches Zuko’s. She is a killer, she supposes. And the boy she killed has been going out of his way to help her. She doesn’t understand and she isn’t sure that she wants to.

More than anything she resents herself for letting father toy with her so heavily. Agni, she thinks that she always knew that he was. But, spirits, she wanted him to love her. She needed him to. So she let it all go. She let him shape her into a monster. She did this to herself, she did  _ all  _ of this to herself. 

Her mind is fractured. 

She is alone. 

She is shamed and undignified.

And it is her fault. 

**.oOo.**

Her eyes are so downcast. She is staring at her palms but he is sure that she isn’t actually seeing them. He thinks that he should reach out and tell her that, that is good enough, that she can stop now. But he is certain that it doesn’t work that way. Not if they want to do this right. 

Instead he waits for her stare to grow less distant. 

All last she looks up, somehow more drained than before. He wonders if this was a good idea. 

“When I spoke to Guru Pathik, he told me that I had to forgive myself if I wanted to do anything good for the world. He said that I had to accept that all of the things I thought of happened and that I needed to let them go.” And how delightful it felt when he did. 

“Accept it?” Azula asks, her voice low.

He nods. 

“I killed you.” 

“But I’m still here.” It feel strange to downplay it, but there will be a time when he discusses that with her. And it might be easier if he allows her to process it and come to terms with it for herself at first. “You were part of a war just like me and Katara and everyone else.” 

She opens her mouth and then closes it again. He is curious but he doesn’t push her. Not until it becomes plenty clear that she is struggling to let any of it go. “I’m not happy with everything I did in the war. I killed people too...I think...when I went into the Avatar state.” He shudders. “And if I didn’t, I hurt them badly enough that they can’t fully recover. You’re not unforgivable.” 

She shifts and rubs her fingers over the cloth of her pants. “Then why doesn’t anyone forgive me?”

“You haven’t exactly asked for it.”

She stares off into the distance. 

“I forgive you.” He smiles. “We’re still going to have to talk about it, but I forgive you.” He hopes that, that makes it at least a little easier for her. “It’ll be so much easier for other people to forgive you if you can forgive yourself.” He might be rambling now, but maybe something will resonate with her. “Don’t you think that it will be easier for you to make friends and heal if you realize that you’re not a bad person so you can stop acting like one?”

“I’m not?”

“You’re not.” I insists. “I know it. I know that you don’t like it but, after working with your spirit energy, I can tell. Your dad’s spirit energy was terrifying and it was really, really dark. Yours wasn’t like that…” 

She swallows again. “It wasn’t?”

“No. It wasn’t.” 

**.oOo.**

Aang ventures to the ship’s kitchen and comes back with a cup of what she can only assume is a noxious combination of onion and banana juice. Fleetingly, the thought of stomaching that is more horrifying than whatever chakra the will be working with next. 

She takes the cup in her hands and stares ambivalently into it. “Is this going to make me throw up?”

“It’s actually not as bad as it sounds.” Aang promises. She can tell that he is lying, she knows that if she asks him to have a glass as well that he will flinch away. “Okay, so I don’t like it at all, but it’s Pathik’s favorite drink.” 

She takes only a little sip first. “What is this supposed to achieve?” 

“Pathik says that it helps him cleans his chakras.” 

She shoots him a skeptical look. 

“And I thought that you could use a little break.” He pauses, “are you feeling a little better now?”

She supposes that she is. It is plenty reassuring to know that at least one person--two, if she counts herself--has forgiven her. Doubly so, hearing that her spirit energy didn’t radiate some deeply rooted vileness. 

“We’re going to be working with the fire chakra next.” Aang says. As soon as the smile appears on her lips he adds, “speaking from experience, working with your choice element’s chakra is one of the hardest.” She can see it in his eyes that he thinks that the same will be said for her. “The fire chakra deals with willpower and shame blocks it off.” 

Her stomach does a little flop, only briefly before it occurs to her that she has been ruminating on her shame well before this. “I don’t think that this one will be any trouble at all, Avatar.” 

All of the indignities that have come with losing control of her own mind--first during the agni kai and then to the hands of Sangyul. All of the indignities that have come from failing to beat Zuko. Zuko who wasn’t never the best firebender. Zuko who was a disgrace in her father’s eyes. What does that make her? She thinks of the indignities of having cried in front of them. She thinks of the indignity of letting Sangyul reap so much of her agency from her, of the gash she’d cut into her face. Mostly her cheeks burn at the thought of gushing over and pining for Aang. Of the night when he had pulled all of the wrong strings and she found herself trailing her finger over his chest until he shoved her away and made his retreat.

Thank the spirits that he had…

She had things on her mind that night. Things that bring color to her cheeks even without having acted upon them. 

Her whole life has amounted to nothing but shame. Shame and humiliation. Foolishness and uselessness. The sheer wasted potential in itself is something to be ashamed of.

Oh it is no trouble. 

It is no trouble at all. 

The shame has been running in circles in her mind for the longest time now. And maybe that is partly why it was so easy for he and Sangyul to slip in and put thoughts into her mind. 

“The hard part isn’t listing the reasons to be ashamed.” Aang shakes his head. “It’s accepting these aspects of your life.” 

Aspects. She thinks that they have become a little more than aspects. And she supposes that he is right, it is significantly harder. Impossible in fact. She would much rather reject them, pretend like they didn’t happen. And yet she can’t. “I am aware that they are a part of my life. Plenty aware. Let’s move on.” 

Aang sighs. “There’s accepting them and then there’s  _ accepting  _ them. You’ve stopped denying that whatever happened, happened. You accepted that those things did happen. But you haven’t accepted that it’s okay…”

“Because it isn’t!” She snaps. She feels rather ill. “I let him do that to me…” she isn’t sure if she is speaking of father or Sangyul or of both of them as one entity. “I…I could have been so much. I...” she trails off. In her distress she has already babbled too much.

Aang nods. “Part of accepting that is realizing that, those things don’t define you.” He cups his hand over hers, a soothing gesture--she recognizes--nothing more and nothing less. “That they aren’t the most important parts of you. There are so many other things that outshine them.”

“Like what?” Azula inquires. What is left of her dignity? What is left of the version of her that she actually had respect for?

“Like your intelligence.”

Perhaps she gives him a skeptical look because he continues. “I think that I would have made a lot more progress on tampering with your spirit energy if you were simple-minded. And if you weren’t so strong.”

There is strength in intelligence and intelligence in strength, she supposes. But she isn’t entirely convinced that she has either. 

“It takes a lot of strength and resilience and courage to even start doing something like this. Trust me, I know that unblocking chakras is difficult. I suggested it because I figured that you could handle it.”

She supposes that he has a point. 

“If you want to fix the things that you are ashamed of, you have to embrace that they happened.” He reiterates. 

And another fair point. Truly she does want to move on from these things. She supposes that she doesn’t have to share them with anyone else, that no one else has to know about this moment--this series of moments of weakness. 

She supposes that it is much better to face them than to run from them. She is a lot of things but she isn’t a coward. She isn’t weak. She, despite it all, has more dignity than that, more pride than that. 

It would be nice to hold her head high again, if only to spite everyone and everything that has tried to make her feel foolish and inadequate. 

She closes her eyes and bunches her fists. But to accept shame is to accept imperfection. Admittedly, she has shed perfection long ago. Admittedly, it almost feels comforting; at least there are no more expectations of her. At least hope and potential have all been wasted to the point where she doesn’t have to worry about upholding them. 

She thinks of how much more significant success would be, how much more satisfying, if she manages to achieve it without it being handed to her. How much more glorious glory would be if it were something she earned for herself in the face of adversary. So she can say soundly that she has done it on her own. That it is a product of skill and talent rather than luck and natural born privilege.

There is a depth in shame. A paradoxical pride in shame. In facing it and making something of it.

She inhales deeply, “alright, Avatar, which chakra is next?”


	17. The Second Paradox

Aang breathes a sigh of relief. It might be that the hardest part is over. She doesn’t seem to have the same earthy attachments that he had when faced with choosing between Katara and the Avatar state. He considers, for the first time, that dealing with shame would be the biggest obstacle for Azula. For a woman who is so heavily immersed in teachings of pride, glory, and honor.

The air has shifted significantly in several ways that he can note. There is notably less dread and anxious anticipation lingering about. 

Azula herself seems lighter somehow. Less tense. 

She is no longer radiating doubt and apprehension. It might be that she agrees that the worst has been faced. Albeit, she still doesn’t look fully content and comfortable. Likely, she is still well aware that there are still four chakras to work through. Four more walls to tear down. Four more vulnerabilities to reveal. 

He can’t imagine that this is in any way, soothing for the princess.

“The next chakra we will work with is the air chakra, located at the heart.” 

Absently, Azula brings her hand to hover over it. 

Likely this one will be hard for her as well but in a much different way. 

“Elaborate, Avatar.”

“This chakra is about love and is blocked by grief.” 

She exactly subverts his expectations when she seems to deflate instead of going tense again. Her face darkens considerably. “There isn’t anything to block.” 

Aang shakes his head. “You wouldn’t be able to feel grief if you didn’t lose anything that you loved.”

“I miss my crown. I miss…” she trails off. “I miss the respect and what not. Does that count?”

Aang crinkles his brows. Truth be told, he isn’t sure. Mostly when he thinks of love, he thinks of people. He isn’t sure that a love of an object or power quite counts. He shrugs, “I guess that you can try it. Think of the things that you love and of how you lost them.”

**.oOo.**

She isn’t sure that she wants to do that. It is bad enough admitting that she has fallen so far, but to draw the memories forth and dwell upon them. She closes her eyes, they’d been over this in the last chakra. 

She thinks of the crown no longer on her head, of the throne, of a steady stream of adoring subjects awaiting her command. And then she thinks of an agni kai. One final battle that snatached it all away. 

“Now what?”

“Well, uh...what Guru Pathik told me was that I just had to remember that the Air Nomads’ love for me still exists in the world as a form of energy. And so they aren’t really gone. I don’t think that, that works for objects and ideas…” he scratches his head. 

“So we can’t move forward?” Azula grits her teeth. “I went through all of this and we can’t finish?”

“Well aren’t there any people that you love?” 

“That won’t work either, Avatar.”

“Why not?” 

“Because they don’t love me.” They aren’t dead but she lost them all the same and she can’t imagine that there are any traces left of Mai and TyLee’s love for her. She isn’t sure that there was any love to begin with. Not for the first time she considers that she simply isn’t the sort of person that anyone could have affections for, much less, deep affections. She feels a darkness resurfacing, likely she is only blocking her air chakra further. But she can’t keep the dark cloud from swelling; she lost her mother too but her mother never loved her either…

She has lost her father and his affections as well. Lost his respect on top of it. She doesn’t need to talk to him to know as much. “I lost all of them but there isn’t any,” she gestures with her hands, “love energy floating around.” She struggles to keep her voice level. 

Aang puts his hand on her back. “Who are they? Mai and TyLee?” 

Azula nods, “mother and father as well.” And her old self. She did love who she used to be. She vocalizes as much.

Aang’s eyes light up. “Self love is a form of love.” 

And what a bitter thing, just like she realizes that not even she can love herself. 

Oblivious, he continues, “just like the energy of the Air Nomads’ love, your old self is still there…” 

She isn’t quite listening. It is a hopeless cause. But then again, she doesn’t have to love this version of her. She didn’t lose this version of her, it is very much still around. Still around rendering her remotely useless. She loved and lost her old self. But, if the Avatar is right, then her old self is still around somewhere. Probably off in the further reaches of her mind, but it isn’t gone. That her isn’t gone. 

At least some of the blockage clears. 

She shakes her head, “that’s not good enough Avatar.” 

He thinks for a moment. “Well how about this; unlike the nomads, Mai, TyLee, and your parents aren’t gone. Zuko and Iroh aren’t either. There might not be any love energy floating around right now, but there can be eventually. Right?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well can you at least acknowledge that, if you work for it, that, that love isn’t truly gone.” 

She isn’t certain that she likes the idea of having to work for love. It is a late epiphany, but she is certain that she wants affection that comes naturally. The sort that she doesn’t have to work for. 

Unconditional love.

“Avatar, I want…nevermind. Yes, you’re correct, that love isn’t truly gone.” Logically speaking it isn’t. It is there for whenever she wants to--if she ever does--put an effort in for it. 

“Azula, you can’t just say it, you have to actually believe it to unblock that chakra.”

She rubs her hands over her face, how is this one harder to overcome than the shame?

“Maybe ‘work for it’ was the wrong thing to say, huh?” He guesses. He pauses, seeming to think it over. “You can try to talk to them again. Is it really that hard for you to believe that they might just like you if you let them know the real you.”

“Avatar, I don’t even know the real me, that is why we are doing this ridiculous ritual.” 

“You haven’t learned  _ anything  _ about yourself?” 

She has, but like many other things, she isn’t sure if she likes what she is learning. The only thing that she is learning is that she is weak. Much weaker than she thought she was. _ There is a depth in shame. A paradoxical pride in shame. In facing it and making something of it. _ She wonders what she can make of it. 

Love.

She can make love from shame. She can shape herself up from shame. Shape herself into something...someone that she can actually appreciate and respect. Perhaps someone that others can appreciate and respect...and love. 

Weakness, she decides, is nearly as paradoxical as shame. Strength, in its truest form is born at the weakest moments. “Several things, Avatar.” She answers finally. 

**.oOo.**

Understanding lights her eyes and relief floods into him. He should have known that she would struggle with this one too. Even so, her determination is quite a force. It always has been. He doesn’t ask her exactly what has clicked in her mind, it is probably better if he lets her have a few secrets. 

It is probably boundlessly more comfortable for her that way. Which is why he is particularly surprised when she says, “I suppose that I just wish I had love now.” 

“You do.” He grins. “If it makes it any easier to unblock that chakra, I love you.” His face flushes as soon as the words leave his mouth. “As a friend! I think that you’re a good person to be friends with. And friendship is a type of love. So, uh, now you have some proof that people can like you without you having to work for it.” 

He thinks that her face colors lightly. She clears her throat before speaking again. “I did work for it though?” 

“Did it feel like you had to or did it just happen naturally?”

“A little bit of both.” She replies. “It was work but it wasn’t tedious work.” 

“Good.” He rubs the back of his head. “But you do know that I’m your friend, right?”

Her face colors more ever so slightly. “I am aware. Next chakra, Avatar.” 

He gives a small laugh. “I think that this next should be a lot easier, we already started talking about it. The sound chakra is located in the throat. It’s all about truth and it’s blocked by…”

“Lies.” She cuts in.

He nods. “More specifically the lies that we tell ourselves.” 

**.oOo.**

Azula frowns, she could have sworn that he said, ‘easier’. Surely he is aware that she is a master of carefully woven lies. So careful and deeply intricate that she has very likely spun several for herself. It might be that she lies to herself more than anyone else. 

Though she does suppose that he is right, they have already uncovered several of them. Her false sense of confidence and greatness, the idea that she has nothing to work on. She thinks of Ember Island, of a night around a fire. Of the biggest lie that she had told that night;  _ my own mother thought I was a monster, but I don’t really care. _ She cares more deeply than she wants to admit even to herself. Everyone thinks that she is a monster, and by Agni, she cares too much. She doesn’t think that she would have shattered so completely if she didn’t. 

_ Because you’re just  _ so-o  _ perfect. _ If only that wasn’t a lie. If only her life had been as pretty as she made it look. 

She very nearly laughs out loud, it would seem that the Avatar is right, this one is easier. She can’t seem to put a stop to her flurry of thoughts. And she has only breeched the surface. The truths that she has already lightly faced even if she’d buried them down again. 

Those aren’t the ones that rattle her. The truths that leave her with an icy dread are the ones she had pushed back as far as she could. Where her perfect life is such a pretty lie, she has several ugly ones. 

Ugly but easy. 

It is so much easier to think that fear is a perfect substitute for love. That fear can earn her friendship and company. She knows this. Especially now that the prospect of being lovable has been so plainly laid out in front of her. 

It is so much easier to declare that the throne is her destiny than to even begin to fathom that her fate is not so clearcut. It is so much easier to do what her father has told her than to forge her own path.

Her stomach plummets and she swallows hard as she scratches at the final layer. It comes up like the mental equivalent of carving out a chunk of her skin and peeling it back. She liked being under Ozai’s control.

And there is a part of her that liked being under Sangyul’s control. 

Because, by Agni, so long as she has someone to direct her and mold her, she can be absolved of any responsibility. She doesn’t have to take blame for her own wrong doings. If she could pretend like she didn’t have a choice then she couldn’t be resented for making the wrong ones. 

Perhaps she had let Sangyul toy with her for as long as he did because it was easier. 

Somehow it was easier. 

It is so much easier to blame Sangyul and Aang for her conflict than to acknowledge that most of her conflict and insecurity is all her own. 


End file.
